Steve Bennett on Channel 5's new comedy

With The Office, Ricky Gervais heralded in a new era of pale imitations, in which askance glances and wry realism took over from hard punchlines. Online, especially, is awash of such low-key proto-sitcoms from aspiring writers and performers, this style being easier to shoot than a studio production, and less obvious when they fail, since they keep their aspirations modest.

Channel 5’s new sitcom – the first in a very long time – inevitably invites comparisons with Gervais’s meisterwerk. Borderline is shot in the same mockumentary way, with establishing shots of mundane office work and cutaway interviews with the characters. Its mild tone seems incongruous after the brash tabloid entertainment of ‘Celebrity’ Big Brother, immediately preceding it in the schedules.

Being set in an immigration department at a small regional airport adds more than a touch of relevance. In tonight’s opener, the team are advised to look for anything out of the ordinary, a Home Office diktat which is deliberately vague about whether that means racial profiling.

Nonetheless, Grant (David Michie) seems thrown where a Bahraini man in dishdasha passes through, and immediately detains him for questioning for no other reason than looking a bit foreign. You might have thought an immigration officer would be a little more savvy than that, but Borderline doesn’t dwell on verité, despite mimicking the shooting style of so many late-night reality shows set in real border-guard units. Another storyline, for instance, flaunts professional ethics to have Tariq (David Avery) interrogating an old mate, DJ Stefano Rocco (Jamie Demetriou), found smuggling cocaine through the airport.

Pussyfooting around issues of race is s recurrent strand, and where Borderline seeks its comedy of embarrassment. Tariq is offended when it’s assumed he speaks Arabic as he’s brown (though it might not be an entirely unreasonable question since his character is half-Egyptian); while baggage-handler Mo (Guz Khan) assumes he’s being briefed about suspicious behaviour because he’s Muslim.

Speaking of which, the visit of the department’s boss, Proctor (Jackie Clune) to the lowly baggage-handler almost exactly replicates David Brent’s awkward visit to the warehouse floor. They just can’t get away from parallels with The Office. The main difference, though, is that while Proctor also tries to be her colleagues’ mate, she’s ultimately too stern and brusque for that, as evidenced by an unexpected C-bomb as the final credits kick in, more gratuitous than witty.

Conversely, much of the show’s better moments come from the playful moments indulged by the younger members of the team, especially wide-eyed Clive (David Elms) and the bored and cynical Andy (Liz Kingsman). Thanks mainly to them, the show has no small measure of charm.

Much is made of how Borderline is part-improvised, though it’s the result, not the process, that matters, and the subdued tone does mean it’s relatively short on laugh-out-loud moments, though there are plenty of droll smiles. And while the characters are engaging, they don’t have the strong personalities that would make Borderline an appointment-to-view, though that’s always a hard call to make from just one episode before we know them properly.

• Borderline is on Channel 5 at 10pm tonight.

Published: 2 Aug 2016