Presumably, after one of his notorious drinking benders, Shane Richie must have woken up in the morning with the dreadful dawning realisation of the night before.

Holding his head in his hands, he must have asked himself: "Lord have mercy on my black soul...but did I agree to executive-produce Shoreditch? And star in it?

Shane, to your eternal shame, I'm afraid you did. And faith alone, I fear, won't help you.

The EastEnders cheeky chappy plays Thomas, who runs the Say When jazz club in London's Shoreditch with his wife Massie (Natasha Wightman) as storm clouds gather over Europe.

As a romantic lead he's not exactly Colin Firth or Hugh Grant - but, then again, neither of the latter have been shacked up with a Nolan.

Into his life flits Butterfly (Richardson), a scheming chanteuse who sets her sights on the happily-married Thomas and homes in on him.

Caught between the loyal, loving Massie and the exciting, dangerous Butterfly, Thomas hatches an elaborate plan to prevent both his women getting hurt.

Fast-forward to the new millennium and Tom (Ross) is told he's inherited a disused office block which just happens to house the (bricked-up) Say When.

But, just to make things interesting, further exploration of the old club reveals the body of a mystery man with a gun at his side.

At its best, this is like EastEnders in fancy dress but these moments are all too rare in an enterprise that has the vitality of stale beer in the drip tray at the Old Vic.

The script is banal beyond belief, and the plot the sort of thing that might have sounded great in the pub the night before but not so clever in the cold light of day.

Richie tries his best, Richardson is duly decorous but Ross is totally bland as the modern-day slacker probing the mystery of the hidden corpse.

Every character is a stereotype and no cliche is left unturned, while the pay-off is so far-fetched it's completely off the radar.

Tim Evans