Laughter through the darkest night

Life Begins, ITV

Nighty Night is best not viewed in the company of your auntie. Unless, of course, your auntie happens to be Julia Davis, the show’s writer and undisputed star who plays Jill Tyrrel, a platinum blonde, a beautician and, in her red leather outfits, the very issue of Hell. If there is a peak of selfishness, Jill has scaled it, riding crop in hand, on the back of her bedraggled husband. Last week’s first episode began with the couple sitting in the doctor’s office, confronted by the news that a cancer is malignant.

"Why me?" cries Jill. "What did I do to deserve this?"

"Darling," comforts Terry. "Let’s try and keep this in proportion. It’s me who’s got the cancer."

And so began what already has the potential to be the darkest, funniest comedy of the season. Let’s be clear, though, Julia Davis is not Chris Morris and Nighty Night is far more accessible than Jam, his Channel 4 sketch show which toyed with despair and had the potential to disturb. In Nighty Night there are sharp lines and emotionally crooked characters. Jill has stuck her husband in hospital and is now in pursuit of Don (Angus Deayton), a doctor whose wife, Cathy, has multiple sclerosis and is wheel-chair bound.

"C’mon Catherine Wheel," urges Jill. By day she routinely insults the customers at her salon, Beauty by Jill, aided by her wheezing assistant, a fat goth.

"You know how I feel about asthma. Take a deep breath and get over it." By night she attends the "evenings of fun and fellowship" organised by a lecherous vicar in the village hall and illustrates her "anguish" over her husband’s illness by dancing to Lavender by Marillion.

In the first episode she presented a new pair of pyjamas to her husband, who explained they were too small. "Doctor says you will be small towards the end," was her rebuttal.

In the second episode, after already telling her friends he’s dead so she can gorge on the emotional support, she returns to the hospital with another "little prezzie" - a book titled Your Journey to Death.

"Dr Webber recommended it. He got me one as well, called Your Whole Life Ahead of You."

In last night’s episode she took Cath out for the day and bullied her into buying a gift she then didn’t like: "I would have preferred the equivalent in cash."

Then, following a fairly disastrous dinner party, she attempted to seduce the hapless Don during an "emergency" breast examination.

In Chris Morris’s Jam a similar scene was so uncomfortable as to be unwatchable. But Davis’s comedy is Morris-lite, in the mould of The Office only with more obvious gags.

The success of the show hangs on the quality of the cast. Angus Deayton plays Don as a man beaten by life and bored by his wife who is rather partial to Jill’s advances. As Cath, Rebecca Front is a simpering sponge whose repressed rage is locked behind a strained smile while Davis’s Jill is cold, duplicitous, ignorant - all in all a rather fabulous sociopath.

What remains to be seen is whether Nighty Night can maintain the balance between nastiness and humour for an entire series. To judge by last night’s denouement, Davis may yet pull it off.

Terry: "I’m responding to treatment. There isn’t going to be a funeral."

Jill: "Terry, you can’t muck me around like this. I’ve made arrangements and that’s that."

In Life Begins Maggie was being mucked around by her estranged husband Phil. After eloping to indulge in an office affair he was last night trying to creep back into the marital home just as she was finally getting jiggy with her son’s history teacher. There is a benefit to switching on to the last episode of a new series which you’ve routinely ignored for the past two months. If it’s any good you’re all set for the second series. And now I, along with nine million other viewers, am indeed all set for the second series of Life Begins, the finest vehicle for Caroline Quentin since she sat on the sofa with the Men Behaving Badly.

Where Nighty Night’s Jill is an ice queen who would run you through with an icicle without batting a false eye-lash, Quentin’s Maggie is more an earth mother anxious to ensure that all around her are safe and grounded. Jill may have the sharper lines, but you’re left in no doubt whose company you’d prefer over the weekend.