In the midst of an Alf Garnett-style rant about modern sitcoms Ally McBeal makes me want to spew

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In the midst of an Alf Garnett-style rant about modern sitcoms ("Ally McBeal makes me want to spew"), in this newspaper a few weeks ago, the actor remarked in passing that The Royle Family was "good of its kind". Just what kind of sitcom Mitchell thought The Royle Family was a good example of, he didn't make clear - but it doesn't seem to conform to any that I can discern.Indeed, the way that Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash have approached the whole genre seems little short of revolutionary It's actually a sort of anti-sitcom. There are no gags, in the traditional sense, and no storylines. In fact, what we appear to be getting are the rhythms of everyday life, filmed live, as it were. Not much happens, except people lounging about and chatting (very Big Brother, but at least Jim doesn't strip down to his underpants). It's a state of affairs Victoria Wood was striving for in Dinnerladies, except she could never take the final step of ditching the plot and that exhausting, needless movement.The Sun's Garry Bushell bemoans the latest "plotless" series, while failing to notice that the first two series (which he loved) were identically without storylines (although that's not to say they don't have their own dramatic "arc", as John Cleese calls it). I'd suggest to both Bushell and Mitchell that The Royle Family may be the most radical new sitcom since Till Death Us Do Part, all of 35 years ago - and that Aherne is a comic near-genius.Sadly, Johnny Speight is no longer around to share his thoughts on the matter, but Alf Garnett's creator would surely recognise Alf's spiritual heir in Jim Royle.

And where Alf Garnett talked of "your beloved Harold Wilson", "bleeding lefties" and "long-haired scouse gits" (his son-in-law, Mike, of course, played by Tony Booth), Jim Royle - a long-haired scouser himself - talks of Countdown and Who Wants to be a Millionaire? This doesn't make The Royle Family any the less "radical" or "socially relevant". It's more an accurate reflection of the death of politics as a subject of everyday discourse, and the triumph of trivia, in the intervening years.Of course, anyone setting out to deliberately create a Till Death Us Do Part for the 21st Century, or some such nonsense, would fall flat on their face. The show's executive producer, Andy Harries, wrote recently that the show's roots were in the social realism of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. In fact, Ricky Tomlinson, who plays Jim, is one of Loach's favourite actors. But it's also typical of Caroline Aherne that she casts Tomlinson with his former wife in Brookside, Sue Johnstone - an inspired and audacious piece of cultural cross-reference as well as a sensible piece of casting in its own right.

Jim and Barbara are supposed to be an old married couple, after all.It is partly Aherne and Cash's sure grasp of their characters' likes and dislikes - and their affinity with them - that means you're not left with that queasy feeling you can get after a Mike Leigh film, of working-class life turned into a psychodramatic freakshow. "The usual shite", may be Jim's reply to Barbara's question of what's on the telly. But the crowning confirmation of the ascendancy of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? didn't come from an AA Gill or a Garry Bushell, or from any National Television Awards. It came was an episode of the last series of The Royle Family, when almost the entire programme comprised the Royles' gleeful armchair participation in the TV quiz.And Aherne and Cash's masterstroke is to have the Royles permanently watching television - or, at least, permanently congregated around the TV set It's a simple idea, but brilliant and bold.