Ordinary Lies, TV review: Mackenzie Crook as Paracetamol Pete shakes off the shadow of The Office

This week on Ordinary Lies, Danny Brocklehurst’s engrossing drama about the staff of a Manchester car showroom, it was the turn of enigmatic salesman Paracetamol Pete (Mackenzie Crook) to take centre stage. When thieves posing as customers stole two cars from Pete and Fat Jason (George Bukhari), the police suspected an inside job. But no one suspected the timid, hypochondriac Pete might have been in on it.

Crook has already escaped the long shadow of Gareth Keenan from The Office, thanks to the critical success of BBC Four’s sitcom Detectorists, which he wrote, directed and also starred in. This role shows he’s feeling confident enough to revisit some aspects of his most famous character.

Paracetamol Pete might be considered the dramatic flipside to Gareth, reminding us that even the easily dismissed office nerd has a complex home life that’s hidden from his colleagues’ view. Perhaps Gareth Keenan would have been more sympathetic, if we’d had the same perspective that Ordinary Lies offers?

Pete juggled a gambling addiction, a pregnant wife who was terrified of another miscarriage and a secret son whose mother had taken to blackmail to get her way. No wonder he’s self-medicating. It was stressful enough to watch this life, never mind live it. Lucky, then, that Pete is perhaps the most accomplished fibber of all these not-so-ordinary liars.