Catastrophe

This week I’ve been watching Catastrophe.

Catastrophe is a new Channel 4 sitcom written by Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan. For such a fresh, spirited comedy it is perhaps apt that the two writers met on new media. Delaney was recommended to Horgan by Father Ted creator Graham Linehan, and their shared enjoyment of one another’s inappropriateness led to a friendship, which in turn flourished into a writing partnership.

The coming together of these two comic minds is a marriage made in heaven. Or hell. Depending on how sensitive your sensibilities. Horgan, you get the feeling, is the one pulling the strings. She has previous in sitcoms, writing the criminally under-rated Pulling and the prison comedy, Dead Boss. Delaney has no such experience: he became famous through Twitter (he has 1.4 million followers) and has taken that online audience into the theatres where he regularly performs stand-up. Having viewed Delaney’s Twitter Feed and stand-up, I think he’s much better at the former. His freewheeling, scattergun, man-child barbs are hilarious online but diluted by the necessary narrative required for hour-long stand-up shows. Therefore, you get the feeling that it’s Horgan steering the thing, laughing at Delaney the naughty boy in the backseat.

            
 It should be said the show isn’t entirely original. Catastrophe doesn’t re-invent the wheel. Its premise has already been done by Judd Apatow in Knocked Up: strangers have inconsequential sex and as a consequence find out they’re pregnant. What the show does have is a great voice: think a dirty threesome between the warts-and-all romanticism of Him and Her; the verbal skirmish of When Harry Met Sally; and the inventive invective of The Thick of It.

       
Episode three aired this week and the opening exchange between Rob and Sharon (the characters share the creators names) perfectly captures how the poetic and profane meld to form a comedy with heart, balls and vagina.

Here’s the couple discussing the need to get their finances in order:

Sharon: (sits up in bed frightened) Have you got life insurance?

Rob: (tired, unimpressed with being woken) I’ll get some. We’ll get you life insurance too.

Sharon: Not too big a policy for me though. I don’t want you to murder me to get the money.

Rob: (straight-faced) I’m not going to murder you. When women get murdered it’s like 85% of the time the husband’s done it. The cops would totally know that it was me. Even if I wanted to kill you I wouldn’t kill you. Or have you killed.

Sharon: (smiling at this joke) I wouldn’t kill you either.

Rob: (smiles and turns back to sleep) Thanks honey.

            
There’s not many couples that talk murder before bed, but that’s what makes Rob and Sharon so appealing: life for them is a joke. Now with a baby on the way they’re having to think seriously. Seeing these intelligent buffoons fall in love and support one another is a genuine tv highlight and one I would recommend.     

Catastrophe is now up to episode four. Previous episodes can be found here:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/catastrophe