If the only way is Essex then stockpile the beans and get under the stairs because we're all going to hell in a Gucci handbasket.
Yes, the queen of the criminal classes Martina Cole is back, holding a big, bad mirror to her homeland where no-one plays baseball but they everyone carries a bat.
The Jane Austen of the newly-minted skewers the mores and morons in this melodramatic, soapy tale of sordid doings, feuds and betrayals. Slaps and slappers. Shags and shenanigans. Mouthy cows and handy wide-boys. It's all in the pot, stirred and simmering.
In the beginning a boy breaks in to a house and meets an unhappy end thanks to the owner who was only protecting his own. But somehow we know it's not going to end there.
Have-a-go hero Nick (Neil Maskell) makes the money, Tammy (Jemma Walker) spends it to hide the darkness in her marriage in which lurks a secret.
Maskell and Walker take this show by the scruff of its neck and high-kick it into the stratosphere. She's all attitude and bling and he's all loping menace and when they have a barney head to the Circle, mate, because it's all going down, no messing.
Meanwhile, Tyrell (Roger Griffiths) wants to know what his dumb son was doing pilfering from such a drum and he seeks out no-nonsense Louis (Marc Bannerman) to find the answers. Seems like the two paths will collide eventually in one almighty showdown.
Along the way there'll be cat fights, knife fights, verbal fisticuffs and enough spilled claret to ruin a good shagpile.
Director Ryan Romain keeps it all on casters, each scene slicing into the next so there's no time to draw breath - it's like a daytime soap without the viewer discretion.
Straight-faced, swaggering and posy as Speedos in Magaluf, Cole's characters - in the hands of writer Patrick Prior - don't mess about and don't back down.
No Hugh Grant-a-like stumbling and hesitation here. They say what needs to be said and then say it again only louder, like Jeremy Kyle's on speaker phone shouting: "Don't tell me, tell 'er!"
This bawdy, raucous, foul-mouthed, cram-your-cakehole-with-popcorn stuff is a Route One, rip-roaring roller coaster.
More cleavage, bitching, dodgy deals, queasy stomachs and fist-fights than a Friday night Romford cab rank, the Theatre Royal and Queen Martina have done it again.
– From February 2011
