Diane Morgan

It's almost as if everything that has happened in 2016 has been leading up to this moment.

Once again Charlie Brooker is back with his unique look back at the year and this week he looks back on the ups and downs of 2016.

Helping Charlie to make sense of the year's news, TV and online phenomena is Philomena Cunk. In her most challenging interview yet, Philomena tries to understand what it is Professor Brian Cox is actually saying.

Screenwipe 2016: When is it, and how can I watch it?

Charlie Brooker's take on a year of news and television may be the most highly-anticipated yet.

Top 40 TV Shows of 2016: #17 Motherland

Is this a sign 2016 wasn't a great year for comedy? The second highest-ranking sitcom in our list - if you even count Fleabag as a sitcom - was only a one-off pilot episode.

Preview: Cunk on Christmas

It's material that could fall down in the hands of a less capable performer, and quite often, Morgan sells a punchline without saying a single word.

Philomena Cunk on Christmas food

The other star of Charlie Brooker's 2016 Wipe casts her eye over festive food, from sprouts to rubbish advent calendar chocolate

BBC Sitcom Season: review of the pilots

Some of comedy's hottest names have been busy working on new sitcom pilots for BBC iPlayer, airing in September, with the hope of these creative projects later being picked up for a television series.

Undoubted comedy of the week was Motherland, a terribly truthful exposition of what it means to battle between being the "good" mother - a flawlessly moneyed, pretty, organised and quietly angry Lucy Punch - and the hopeless, exemplified here by Diane Morgan, who lives off frozen food, only gives a forlorn what-the-bugger-now sigh when she severs her finger, and is quietly happy.

Caught in the middle, as I suspect an entire 90% of British mothers are and always have been, is the phenomenal Anna Maxwell Martin as Julia, who makes the one mistake - one! - of lying, once. When asked, by the impossibly kind school to which she ferries with difficulties her two children, whether she had forgotten it was half-term, she opts for a proudly cheerful "No. No?" and so mires herself in a day of tense phone calls, criminal driving, accidental and deliberate snobbery, blood, wine and insane hunger while trying to hold down a job in event management. She's due later in her hellish week to have Peter Mandelson introduce the Women in Construction awards, which deserves an award of its own. As does the terse "I don't have to come to the office for a whole day to watch Elaine print out a press release."

"What time is it now?" she begs Liz (Morgan) as they struggle with their many kids, with prayers for it to be about 4.30pm, or if possible midnight. "Just after midday." "Fucking HELL." It's written by, among others, Sharon Horgan and Graham Linehan, features the most fascinating annoying dad yet written, and is a sure triumph.

Undoubted non-comedy of the week was We the Jury, an alleged piece of humour that actually ran out of ideas before the end of its pilot, which is going some. Did anyone at the BBC actually watch this before it aired? I ask in a spirit of genuine inquiry rather than nastiness, because they've just given me Motherland.

Purportedly a half-hour take on jury service, it featured cliched characters and surreal madness; almost never a winning mix. Ivan Goncharov's novel Oblomov is the only successful example. Written in 1859, it's only about three thousand times funnier and more interesting, and it was in Russian. Had We the Jury popped up on Radio 4 Extra at half-four in the morning - I'm always awake about then, musing on different lives - I would have had to put on slippers, race to the loo and swallow bleach. Again: did anyone watch this before it aired?

The Rob Brydon-helmed panel show is on its 10th series now, and it has endured for a reason: it's reliably good - albeit formulaic - fun, thanks to the counterintuitive chemistry of David Mitchell and Lee Mack, plus the well-chosen guests. Tonight's episode features the irascible Michael Smiley, the mordant Diane Morgan, the always