Love Soup

- Season 2

(2008)

Ever the neurotic Alice is worried when regional boss Catherine Sumpter, who is allegedly a Lesbian, asks to meet her in a hotel though she escapes unscathed. She is also concerned that driving instructor Ted may be making advances at her but the lesson ends up getting car-jacked whilst Cleo is annoyed to read in her boyfriend's journal that she is not good in bed and Milly falls for the romantic shadow of a man who burgles her flat.

Cleo tries to set Alice up on a blind date with one of the department's sales reps but it falls flat because Alice only has eyes for the young man she met at the cash dispensing machine. Meanwhile Milly starts to doubt her boyfriend's fidelity and recruits Cleo to set a honey trap to test him. Needless to say it does not end well.

Alice meets Mitch, a former boyfriend who is now a university lecturer and they go on a date. However she becomes convinced that one of his students is stalking him - which leads to confusion and an end to the affair. Milly and Cleo also have an encounter with the police following an ill-advised foray into speed dancing. Alice meets a man through a lonely hearts column but when he fails to show she tears up his photo.

Whilst Milly dates a man who is part native American Cleo has a bizarre sexual encounter at the local recycling centre, leading to a spot of S & M. Alice encounters Neil, an old flame who dumped her some years earlier but her efforts to follow him lead her being taken in by the anti-terrorist police.

Alice is literally swept off her feet by the successful and suave Matthew Chater.

Following Alice's split with Matthew Milly and Cleo decide to help her out and find her a suitable boyfriend - by looking at the confidential prescription recommendations for male customers at the pharmacy though it fails to bear fruit. Alice herself is more concerned by the strange behaviour of new colleague Antonia, who seems unable to distinguish between fiction and reality.

Tired of commuting to work from Brighton Alice rents out her flat and sleeps on Milly's sofa whilst looking for a place of her own. Through Lloyd Drewitt she meets an actor Jake Randall, who is rather too attentive, an actress Fae Madison and a writer, Douglas McVitie, who knew the late Gil Raymond and with whom she gets on rather well.

Alice and Douglas begin dating and go to dinner with one of his ex-girlfriends and her media mogul husband. She is a cartoonist and Alice is less than flattered when she realizes that she has created a cartoon character that looks exactly like Alice herself. Fae meanwhile goes on her first blind date in years but Milly finds herself having to get rid of an unwanted admirer.

Alice and Douglas go to the Royal Court to see a play starring one of Alice's all time favourite actors Gordon Bexter but she is rather put off to learn that he is to direct a play about necrophilia 'Kiss of Death' by an avant-garde German playwright. With her old friend Lloyd becoming available again Alice believes that she and Douglas are not suited to each other and should break up but he is very persistent in trying to change her mind.

Alice has moved in with Fae, whose father Larry is dying so Fae asks Alice to pray for him. In the event he gets better and his gold-digging new wife is not happy with Alice. Meanwhile Douglas is finding it hard to cope with the break-down of his marriage and tries acupuncture to help forget her, as well as getting involved with Heather, his ironing lady.

Whilst Alice begins to see Fae's bad habits there is good news for Douglas when it seems likely that a script he wrote some time ago will be turned into a film. The problem is that the optioned star Marty Cady was recently found in his car with a dead prostitute but nonetheless Douglas goes to Marty's villa to work on the screenplay. A despairing Lloyd meanwhile ends up having sex with a paraplegic woman.

Alice realizes that Douglas has ended their affair and stops Lloyd from committing suicide. They begin talking and he gives her the CDs of Gil's diaries so that she can hear the voice to whom she spoke on the phone but never got to meet. feeling happier she gives bereavement advice to a young friend only to find that he was not bereaved after all before visiting Gil's house and resting on the gate where is ghost briefly appears.y