PLAYWRIGHT Gordon Steel has had his fill of reality TV talent shows.

Seeing his wife and daughter cry over the exit of another no-hoper, he could take no more and wrote a cautionary tale with his customary mix of blue-collar comedy and relationship frictions, with the heart always worn on the sleeve.

He has found a sympathetic ear in John Godber, who himself addressed the bitter pills and pillocks of reality TV in his 2002 satire Reunion and now directs Steel's premiere a la Hull Truck mode.

Reality TV's grip has strengthened still more since 2002, to the point where it is impossible for a play to be more outrageous than the world it is satirising. So, instead, Steel takes it down to the local North Eastern boozer, where retiring WMC landlord Sid recalls the days when glum Harry Wilde (James Hornsby) and his brothers, nutter Billy (Robert Hudson) and daft Cloughie (Graham Martin) formed the oldest boy band in clubland.

Harry, Furniture Deliverer Of The Month, has been provoked by the bravado of singing-fireman Bobby Diamond (Martin), who is enjoying his Warholian 15 minutes of TV fame by romancing his old flame, Harry's wife Janice.

Steel's brassy play follows a pungently cheesy path through tentative first dance steps, club nights in shimmering drag, brotherly jealousies and warfare with a miffed wife (Julie Higginson) and peeved girlfriends (Erica Barker, in myriad roles in her professional debut).

The characterisations are broad, the humour even broader, so vigorous and blunt that it is best enjoyed with a pint in hand and a sing-song on the lips as the boyz sing Sinatra and Shania Twain covers. Steel hasn't lost his touch with quotable punchlines, or his ability to induce laughter of recognition at our foibles, but Wilde Boyz' story arc is too predictable and Steel says nothing startlingly prescient about where the drug of quick-fix TV fame is headed next.

He usually pulls off a surprise, but we wait in vain for the twist of lemon or the heartbreak. Instead, Tuesday's audience went wild for the song routines, which merely affirms how low the bar for entertainment is now set.

  • Wilde Boyz, Hull Truck Theatre, Hull, until July 28. Box office: 01482 323638.