Jo Brand

In Funny Business (BBC2), the first of a series, Eddie Mair narrated an investigation into the ways in which standup comedians can make big money, none of which is by telling jokes in comedy clubs.

Appearing in adverts is one way, but many comics find selling stuff on TV to be inconsistent with either their morals or their sense of humour. Not that many, actually. Less objectionable is the corporate gig. You're just doing your act, albeit in front of a room full of company managers for an obscene amount of money. Ricky Gervais gets £25,000 for a 20-minute corporate set. Michael McIntyre gets £40,000. It's not surprising that up-and-coming comedians on corporate booker Jeremy Lee's roster fall over themselves to appear in his annual Real Variety Show, essentially a huge audition for an audience of events company managers. Again, it's just a gig, you end your set with the punchline: "I'm available for bookings, and I also host!"

A lot of comedians won't touch corporate gigs either, but not necessarily for the reason you might think. "I doubt there's one comedian in the world," said Arthur Smith, "who hasn't died on his or her arse at a corporate gig."

Jo Brand finds them bracing - "If you do corporates, you get the message that not everyone loves you," she says - but Rhod Gilbert still gets heart palpitations just driving by the venues of old corporate failures. It may be filthy lucre, but it doesn't sound like easy money.

Funny Business, BBC Two, review

Michael McIntyre: £40,000. Ricky Gervais: £25,000. Jason Manford: £25,000. Jo Brand: £10,000-£25,000. Barry Cryer - who after that lot looks an absolute steal - is £2,000-£5,000. This, according to Funny Business, is what it costs to hire the above to tell some jokes at a corporate event.

Great British Bake Off Comic Relief special guests

Warwick Davis, Bob Mortimer, Jo Brand Stephen K Amos, Ed Byrne and Watson & Oliver will take part in the Great British Bake Off specials for Comic Relief.

ITV's Splash!: What does Jo Brand know about diving?

Just when you thought it couldn't get any more strange in the murky waters of reality TV, along comes Splash!. Many viewers were exasperated about the lack of knowledge Jo Brand had about diving.

Jo Brand once went to A&E after diving accident

Comedian and and keen swimmer Jo Brand has painful memories of diving, which once led to her being treated in A&E.

Show of the year - Getting On. The third run of writer-star trio Jo Brand, Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine's BBC4 series set in an NHS hospital was quite simply the best piece of British small-screen fiction in years. Branching out even further from its notional sitcom roots, it administered shots of high farce, occupational satire, metaphysical meditation and excruciating realism. I refuse to accept that Pepperdine's Dr Pippa Moore is not, at this moment, wafting through some overstretched ward, offering supercilious side smiles to confused geriatrics.

The definition of a slow-burn hit, this diffident black comedy picked up another armful of admirers with its third series - at this rate it'll sweep the 2017 Baftas. Life on the geriatric NHS ward staffed by nurses Den (Joanna Scanlan) and Kim (Jo Brand) and plagued by sniffy consultant Pippa (Vicki Pepperdine) was much the same. It was slightly worsened by increased outsourcing and management-speak but was still a case of making do, looking for small victories and, in the moments that give the series its tender heart, remembering that easing patients' pain is the point. Scanlan, Brand and Pepperdine's acting and writing was more assured then ever, with nicely woven story arcs never taking away the best thing about the series: it lets its realistic, ragged characters breathe.

Quietly brilliant and deserving of a lot more noise, Jo Brand, Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine's hospital comedy has explored the intersection between what's funny and what's heartbreaking without any self-regard or fuss.

Radio Times review

A obvious triumph for BBC4's understated cleverness, increasingly celebrated as the superb third series developed, was Getting On, which ended its run on Wednesday. Jo Brand, Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine write and act this comedy, set in a women-only geriatric hospital ward. It's a masterclass in letting your creations breathe.

The main characters are all female, something that hardly ever happens on television but is never emphasised. This series acknowledged the accelerating privatisation of the health service, but wove it into Pepperdine's ace portrayal of the antagonist Dr Moore, a brittle snob who uses her sharp elbows to nurse her own reputation and sees patients as stock to be processed - or, in series three, potential subjects for her photographic study of vaginal atrophy in the elderly.

Dr Moore's desire for profitable efficiency is constantly undermined by grubby reality in the form of Den and Kim, the ward sister and nurse who have to dish out the drugs, shuffle the beds and "wipe the bums". Scanlan's Den is a jumble of kindness, daydreams, delusion and loneliness whose pregnancy this year made her even more distracted and vulnerable - but Kim is our eyes and heart, thanks to Brand's selfless performance.

Getting On gives Kim no comic traits apart from weary bluntness and a drab home life, hinted at in phone calls about running out of fish fingers and ketchup. While the funny, absurd stuff was happening to Pepperdine and Scanlan, Brand represented the show's frustrated compassion, buffeted by bureaucratic idiocy and often disobeying orders to do little favours for the patients or avoid another dirty, pointless task.

Kim's attempt to become a doctor was crushed in mundane fashion: she didn't have the time or ability to pass the relevant course. The last episode had emotional pay-offs for Dr Moore and Den, earnt through careful but unobtrusive series-long plotting, that gave the characters new depth. Kim just bumbled off home as usual but, BBC4 budgets willing, she'll be back to win more tiny victories against depressing odds.

Honest, warm and human, Getting On's wry dramatisation of the inefficiences of the NHS is as clever as it is funny; the script is a credit to Jo Brand, Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine. In the series finale, a group of schoolchildren arrives at the geriatric ward to sketch images of the patients and Sister Den (Scanlan) is sceptical: "Most are doolally, deaf or asleep. Good luck to them." Watch for cameo appearances by Hugh Bonneville and Tilda Swinton.