Jo Brand

Going Forward: serious comedy, just don't expect laughs

So it's not that funny, for a comedy. But it is sharply observed, nicely performed, with credible dialogue, some of which is surely improvised. The days when sitcom meant a door opening, someone walking in and delivering a one-line, then pausing for the canned laughter, are nearly over, thankfully. Plus it captures a hellish world where people come second to profit, a world of care that doesn't care. And it will strike a chord with - or maybe send a shudder through - anyone who has ever worried about money, or has or will have elderly relatives who need or will need help. Everyone, in other words.

Jo Brand returns as Kim Wilde, the NHS nurse from Getting On, coping with a demanding but poorly paid job as well as three kids and a dog. Omid Djalili co-stars as her husband, a private hire driver. Tonight, he's forced to rescue Kim from an emergency with a passenger in the back. This is isn't so much a sitcom about predicaments and foibles, however, as a warming portrayal of good people getting on with life under near-impossible circumstances.

Jo Brand's sitcom is mouldy, miserable and very funny

Picking up where she left off with the Bafta award-winning Getting On, Jo Brand's domestic comedy finds the best laughs in grim despair.

Review: Going Forward, BBC4

There are only three episodes in this run, which is a shame. Brand has become one of the highest profile comedians in the country in recent years and she is doing something here that is both relevant and funny. If Ken Loach made sitcoms they might be something like Going Forward.

Going Forward: Jo Brand shines but sitcom needs nursing

This was another comedy about broken Britain, but focusing not on those who toil inside a knackered state institution but the wider social fabric, privatised to buggery but somehow doddering on. Homelier and gentler and patchier than Getting On, it somehow lacks its asperity but also its poetry.

Jo Brand interview

"If you're doing comedy, you must be funny first and preach second."

Why do comedians make such good actors?

It is both a hard question to answer and an easy one. I think the best comedians are natural performers which would be suited for taking on a script. But they can also be uncontrollable show-offs, which might not go down too well with a hard taskmaster. By all accounts Ken Loach loved Dave Johns from day one.

Young people don't own comedy - and nor should they

How dull would our lives be if we, in effect, introduce a mandatory retirement age for wisecracks?

Jo Brand: I'm thick skinned. I've had to be

Jo Brand has just completed a 135-mile walk in seven days, and her feet feel as if they've been "lightly blow-torched". We are in the offices of Sport Relief, the charity she has raised over £800,000 for, and Brand is musing on why she chose to trample all the way from the Humber Bridge to Liverpool.