On the one hand, Andrew Payne's
The Meeting is a pretty straightforward - and very effective - office sitcom, but on the other it's obvious from the start that it's going to deal with some pretty dark sexual politics. Somewhere fairly senior, but still a couple of floors away from the top, in an unnamed corporation, departmental head Stratton (Mark Hadfield) has been working for months on a project dreamt up by abrasive wunderkind Cole (nice to see Big Favourite Around These Parts Sam Swainsbury back on the London stage.) It's a Monday morning and they're ready to finalise a licensing deal with another company across the road but Jack, the man they've been in talks with, doesn't show up: Rumours are rife about him having had some kind of breakdown and being escorted off the premises. Instead the final deal is postponed to later in the week, with one of Jack's underlings taking over.
