Band of boys with infidelity on their minds

It's not easy convincing the men in your household to watch a show called A Thing Called Love. You try it. The minute they hear the name they'll screw their noses up.

Once they've clicked it's all about relationships? Forget it.

But actor Ben Miles, who plays a sex-crazed, lad-about-town with a wife and kids at home, agrees they won't know what they're missing when the six-part BBC drama starts on Prime on Sunday night.

"Forget the title," he says. "Don't think, 'Oh jeez, it's a girls show'. It's a great piece about male friendship as well as female friendship. So sit him down on the sofa, get him a beer and watch it together."

Written by William Ivory and also starring Paul Nicholls (Eastenders) and Liz White, (Ultimate Force) A Thing Called Love follows a group of mates in their late 20s and early 30s, navigating their love lives in the rather unglamorous city of Nottingham.

More Swingers than Sex & the City, most of the dalliances are seen from the male perspective, testament to the more accurate working title of Love and Sex.

There's labourer Gary, the hopeless romantic trying to figure out if he really loves his fiancee; his best friend Paula, who has a history of men walking all over her; Floyd, who is adjusting to life without sex after the birth of his baby; and Miles' character Kelvin, a so-called family man who will shag anything that moves.

Anyone who has experienced infatuation, temptation, infidelity, heartbreak, guilt or regret will find something to relate to, although it's not always easy to understand the thick Nottingham accents.

Miles is married in real life but insists he was always a "ditherer who was always terrible at chatting people up", unlike Kelvin, who seems to have forged a career out of it.

"Kelvin is permanently 16," says Miles. "At school he was probably the guy who had all the girls and the first one to have a car and all that kind of stuff. It was great fun to play that part. I liked the challenge of making him sympathetic."

Rather than making him out as the villain, Ivory explores how he justifies his actions and affects those around him. In Kelvin's mind he still loves his wife and children - he's just a sexual person fulfilling his urges, which get more surprising as the series unravels.

And it's the characters' urges that make for some rather funny moments. When Gary discovers his wheelchair-bound brother is looking for a sex partner on the internet, for instance, he ropes in his mates to help make it happen.

"There are so many series over here about life and stuff - 'what's life all about?' kind of thing - but this one really stood out for me," says Miles. "The storylines are very strong and the characters are very well written. It just goes a bit deeper than your average soap."

* A Thing Called Love - Sunday, 8.30pm, Prime