The programme was initially a critical success although its audience figures were steady rather than spectacular, netting an average of five million viewers an episode.
Alice is a modern woman with old-fashioned values, who lives in Brighton, and commutes to London, where she is the regional manager of a perfume company concession in a department store.
What is worse, her colleagues, Cleo Martin (Sheridan Smith) and Milly Russel (Montserrat Lombard), always seem to have more success with men, though their relationships never really last more than a week.
Gil is an American comedy writer, who has moved to England to start a new project with TV producer Lloyd Drewitt (Owen Brenman).
The only exception is the final scene of the first series, which shows Alice in the theatre watching a comedy where she is the only person in the entire audience not laughing – apart from Gil, who is sitting two rows behind her.
In the seventh episode of the series, Alice is invited into Gil's world via Lloyd, where she begins a relationship with a writer, Douglas McVitie (Mark Heap).
Andrew Billen in The Times said that, "Like David Renwick's previous sitcom creation, Victor Meldrew [from One Foot in the Grave], Alice is meant to represent a bunch of prevailing attitudes.
"[2] James Walton in the Daily Telegraph commented negatively about the loss of Landes saying, "In the first series Gil's job as a TV scriptwriter meant that Renwick could always add a bit of edge by attacking modern television.
The basis for this was subsequently rendered redundant as Alice began to move in media circles via her association with Lloyd, Douglas and Fae.
But Milly falling in love with a shadow – actually more like a projection of a man on to the side of a van that miraculously happens outside her flat every night – well, that's just stupid.