The rude and crude C4 comedy that’s actually worth watching
Sharon horgan and rob Delaney are like a couple of frisky rabbits on a mountain who accidentally start an avalanche. Their outrageously rude sitcom Catastrophe (C4) began with a onenight stand that swiftly turned into a mortgage, two small demanding monsters and total exhaustion. Their nights are sleepless for all the wrong reasons.
Sharon and rob stagger through life, perpetually concussed by the impact of having children.
anyone with kids will recognise the emotions. anyone yet to start will think: ‘I don’t care how loudly my biological clock ticks, please let me never, ever be mad enough to do that.’
Many of the gags are far too fruity to describe or reprint in a family newspaper, even though they are mostly about family life.
But the underlying themes are timeless and traditional, such as rob’s self-pity when their little boy falls over and Sharon goes into maternal overdrive.
‘What if I cut open my eye?’ he bleats. ‘ Best case scenario, you’d text me a shopping list while I’m in the emergency room.’
The stars, who are also the show’s writers, have added a layer of darkness to this third series. rob is drinking too much, though he doesn’t seem aware of it, and he is spying on his partner — reading her emails, checking her browser history, going through her receipts.
Sharon is tortured by guilt after a drunken snog (and a bit more) with the singer in a student band. She’s a terrible liar, though being a bloke rob doesn’t want to think too much about why his wife is suddenly being extra-nice to him.
The observations that fuel this sitcom are always biting. There was a marvellous moment in a hospital corridor when a nurse began inspecting their toddler’s gashed head.
Sharon and rob were embroiled in a row, but it was the nurse (abbie Murphy) who gripped our attention — once she decided this wasn’t a child abuse case, she looked as bored as a teenager in a double maths lesson.
Sharon tried to explain how she knew the exact date of her little boy’s last tetanus jab: ‘ First day at nursery, he was bitten by a squirrel,’ she gasped, and burst into a flood of tears. The nurse could barely summon enough interest to shrug.
Catastrophe has evolved into the most realistic comedy on TV. at the same time, it is also the most inventively sexual and foul-mouthed. Watch it, but not when your children are in the room, whatever age they are.
Children weren’t the problem for Julie and Gary, the married couple in The Secret Chef (ITV).
She was a hopeless cook, he was a curry aficionado — so Julie tiptoed away to study at an Indian restaurant and learn to prepare mouthwatering biryanis and bhajis.
This didn’t happen overnight, though. Julie reckoned she could burn water, and she wasn’t far wrong. her tutor, cookery writer nisha Katona, was constantly trying to mask a look of horror.
Since she couldn’t practise at home, Julie had to invent all sorts of excuses for being away.
Gary was a nice fellow, but he was obviously having suspicions. By the time he sat down for his slap- up dinner ( cooked in secret by Julie), he could think about nothing but where his wife had gone.
he didn’t believe all the nonsense about weekend business conferences or a timeconsuming hairdo plus a makeover and massage. his appetite had dissolved completely. It was all very self-defeating.