“LOL.” So often said, so rarely true. But one of the countless joys of Catastrophe – the Channel 4 sitcom that marries the talents of Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney, and already looks unmatchable as the best comedy of 2015 – is how often you find yourself laughing out loud. Not tittering nervously, smiling appreciatively, or cringing as characters suffer mortifying embarrassment that you later claim was enjoyable. Last night’s second instalment, in which pregnant Sharon and her fling-turned-soulmate Rob got closer while sitting in a pool of stranger’s piss, kept the actual lolz coming.

Most of all, it’s a confidence thing. Your average new sitcom winces under the burden of establishing characters and premise. Everyone feels the tension as it hovers nervously on the doorstep, hoping you’ll let it in. But Horgan and Delaney have been around, and had projects both succeed and fail. Now, like highly experienced lovers who have finally found each other, they instinctively know where to put stuff. Catastrophe’s first two episodes have barrelled in, drink in hand, grinning ear to ear, and swept us up with them, disguising the fact that they were methodically ticking off all the set-uppy things opening episodes have to get through.

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They’ve also laid lasting foundations. The genius moment in the first week was when Sharon and Rob said an apparently jokey goodbye to each other after half a week of hot sex. He said she was smart and smelled good; she noticed he was kind to waiters and “might actually be a good person”. We could see that they’d fallen in love right there, making Catastrophe a proper romcom, as beautifully rommy as it is swaggeringly commy.

Jokes are funnier when we like the people telling them. So Horgan and Delaney are careful to give their avatars vulnerabilities. She’s afraid of ageing into loneliness, and is terrified by pregnancy and motherhood. He’s a recovering alcoholic who is, like many men who speak entirely in quips, hiding his fundamentally serious nature; witness the scene where he struggled to laugh along as Sharon’s cynical, piss-taking brother made light of things Rob really cares about.



Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney on sex, parenthood and Catastrophe Read more

As Sharon self-destructively dithers and Rob blinks sadly at the prospect of losing her, there’s something at stake. We want our new friends to make each other happy. (Incidentally, Catastrophe forms a perfect double bill with Togetherness, the superb HBO dramedy about thirtysomethings in emotional crisis, which Sky Atlantic has helpfully scheduled at 10.35pm, slap-bang after Catastrophe’s credits roll. There, too, the big, stupid gags come from living, breathing, crying, farting human beings, and are all the funnier for it.)



Most of Catastrophe’s jokes are outrageous, eye-wateringly dirty confessions. They work so well because they feel cathartic and real. Delaney in particular has managed to transfer his priapic-but-sensitive Twitter persona into three dimensions. Much more open and self-aware than the standard shambling, fixed-by-a-magic-woman romantic-comedy hero, Rob is funny and he knows it. But he isn’t an implausible conduit for a comedy writer’s best lines; we believe he’d come up with this stuff.

In fact, Rob and Sharon regularly laugh at each other’s jokes – a simple pleasure that less soulful comedies don’t allow themselves to indulge in. We’re laughing too, and we’re laughing from the heart and the gut. And that’s why Catastrophe feels so good.