The Fried Chicken Shop, Channel 4, review Real British youngsters (plus the odd oldie) were the stars of The Fried Chicken Shop. Following on from last year's one-off, Channel 4"s cameras returned, for three solid weeks, to the Roosters Spot takeaway in Clapham, London. And, although this three-part documentary lacks Fazer's noble mission, and has a similar-sounding voice-over, this first instalment felt like superior telly. It's an unlikely but brilliantly simple idea: all human life is here in this little south London joint, gently unfolding to the sound of sizzling fowl. As one employee said, "People, they feel free inside the shop, and that's why they talk about everything." We saw two plummy male students, discussing girls; friends Sisi and Lulu stumbling in, plastered, from a sunny afternoon on the common; 60-year-old "local tranny" Jessie chastising another girl for not sprucing herself up more. "What kind of people are in this chicken and chip shop!?" was the comeback, a rare fusion of moral outrage and deep-fry pedantry. The two partnerships that made the greatest impression were co-workers Harris and Imran - best, bickering mates, the former heartbreakingly courting comely Italian waitress Fabiola - and chicken-shop regulars, couple Tyrone and Leah. Very late on, before the closing, impromptu rendition of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life at one table, it emerged that Leah was pregnant. They're very young, and you worried for them. But nor could you help wishing this impossibly cute, radiantly optimistic pair all the luck in the world, and all credit to the filmmakers for calmly and cannily drawing us into their lives.