'The Cleaner' Is the Britcom You Didn’t Know You Needed

I was a sitcom kid growing up. I snuck in my fair share of hour-long series when my parents weren’t looking. However, on reflection, most of what I gravitated towards were comedic, caper-based shows like Cheers, Golden Girls, Roseanne, and then eventually – thanks to PBS – Britcoms like Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, and the king of sketch comedy, Monty Python. 

Somewhere along the way to adulthood, the balance shifted, and I landed and stayed firmly in hour-long drama territory.  I love to laugh, but over the decades, I have become so picky about what’s funny to me that, with few exceptions, my interest in half-hour comedy is pretty low. All of this is my stem-winding way of telling my fellow sitcom exiles that The Cleaner — created and written by, and starring Greg Davies — might be the answer to your (fairly low-priority, secular) prayers. 

Paul Wickstead, known to all as Wicky, is a very tall middle-aged guy from Birmingham whose professed only goals in life are pub-centric. He wants to get down to The White Horse on Fridays pretty sharpish so he can get the first crack at the delicious naan the pub owner bakes for curry night. He wants to win a horse in the annual Christmas Day raffle (how Mervyn manages to furnish a horse for this event every year is never addressed, and I will be asking about it should I have the opportunity to interview Davies one day). He claims that he just wants to make enough money to cover his expenses and get hangover-level drunk with his friends weekly. 

Yet, somehow, Wicky’s work as a crime scene cleaner is forever drawing him into the problems and dramas of others, transforming him into a sort of fairy godfather to the bereaved and the inconvenienced, and an unexpected detective whenever the killer finds their way back to the scene of the crime. We never see violent deaths take place; we never see a corpse. The Cleaner is not that kind of show. Instead, we see copious pools and lavish spatters of fake blood (the tell is that it never congeals) (also, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is a TV show). We do get a cleaning montage in nearly every episode.

For all that he’s a schlubby everyman, Wicky is also very good at his job. A big part of the humor of The Cleaner is watching this imposingly large man with lots of highly technical training, who just wants to get on with his day, very nearly brought to the edge of madness by being drawn into whatever stuff the family, friends, or killer of the deceased are going through. Imagine if Basil Fawlty or any historical iteration of Edmund Blackadder gave a hoot about other people, and you’re about halfway there. 

Most episodes use the same basic, reassuring structure: Wicky arrives at a crime scene, where he’s been summoned by his friend, PC Ruth (Zita Sattar). The two exchange lightly flirtatious expositional banter. Ruth then gives Wicky a precis of the scene he’s been sent to clean, and he gets to work, only to be interrupted by the owner of the house or pub or perhaps a customer of the place of business he’s cleaning up. Rather than insisting they vacate the premises, Wicky contorts himself around them. In the ensuing comedy of errors, our hero finds himself lending a sympathetic ear, providing some refreshingly bracing yet sweet assistance, and eventually, can complete the job he was sent to do. 

Each episode stands alone, but not in a vacuum. Throughout The Cleaner’s two seasons, we learn Wicky never recovered from the sudden end of his first romantic relationship 30 years ago; he is exasperated by (but is always looking out for) his deeply odd best friend Weasel; Ruth has a bit of a soft spot for him. Making each episode an entirely self-contained story also ensures viewers are treated to Greg Davies going head-to-head with titans of British film and TV, including Helena Bonham-Carter as a very matter-of-fact, mostly harmless murderer; Harriet Walter as a surprisingly un-posh pub owner; Zoe Wanamaker as an unhinged sculpture desecrator; and David Mitchell as a very fussy novelist. 

These qualities also reveal that Wicky’s low-stakes, low-ambition contemporary riff on Humphrey Bogart’s “I stick my neck out for nobody” ethos in Casablanca is as much of a lie as Rick’s. The man cares, and in between self-deprecating wisecracks and increasingly vexed hopes that someone — anyone! —  around him will begin behaving reasonably, we see that he’s not just good at his highly technical job—Wicky’s good at being a person, too. 

This particular balance of comedic and believable character elements is a category in which British and Irish sitcoms are the undefeated champions, and The Cleaner has earned its place sitting comfortably and respectably alongside contemporaries, including The Year of The Rabbit, Derry Girls, Moone Boy, and Ghosts. Like Wicky himself, The Cleaner is not particularly ambitious, but it’s very good at what it sets out to do. A third season has been filmed this year, and I look forward to it making its way to this side of the Atlantic as soon as possible. 

The Cleaner Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on BritBox. Season 3’s first images have been released, and a premiere date is expected to follow in due course.