It's clear that Pushers is a real passion project for Rosie Jones. She first had the idea for a sitcom about someone on benefits who turns to drug dealing to make ends meet back in 2018 and despite a change of government it's sadly as relevant as ever. It's a pretty dark idea for a comedy – featuring a drug dealer as the sympathetic lead character – but it's also pretty funny.

 

I don't want to go into too much detail as that will spoil the fun, but Jones stars as Emily, who works in a charity shop but is constantly struggling to get by. In the opening episode there's the obligatory interview scene in which she claims her benefits and through a Kafkaesque mix of bizarre questions and computer-says-no answers finds herself without any visible means of support.

 

As you do, she ends up in the toilets in conversation with someone who asks her to deliver a package in return for a few quid. Emily doesn't want to do it, but eventually she succumbs and after a series of comedic mishaps and finds herself involved in the local narcotics trade in this non-specific northern town - it's called Bracklington, because Jones is from Bridlington and co-writer Peter Fellows is from Bracknell. 

 

Jones has cited comedies such as dinnerladies as an influence, but this has more of a feel of something like Shameless. The urban setting of council estates and grimy pubs certainly feels more like Shameless than anything Victoria Wood ever wrote (though actually the line "Welcome to our inner rectum...sanctum" is very Wood and delivered with perfect timing.)

 

The writing is sharp as you would expect – Fellows previously worked on The Death of Stalin and Veep – and the cast is consistently strong, with a supporting team that also includes actors with disabilities, alongside Clive Russell, also recently seen in netflix cop show Department Q.

 

The plotting tends towards the silly and slapstick – clouds of accidentally spilt cocaine have been making me laugh since Woody Allen* sneezed into a stash in Annie Hall – while the hapless police are either sentimental or useless and make the Keystone Cops seem like the Sweeney.

 

Jones has had more than her share of online trolls in recent years and seems to be unjustly targetted. For those bigots and idiots in the 'Rosie Jones is not funny' camp let's just hope that Pushers will win them over. Having watched Pushers I'm very much in the 'Rosie Jones is bloody funny' camp. If they don't laugh it's their loss.