Julia Davis

Only something special could nudge Victoria Wood out of stand-up exile, and this gig in aid of the British Heart Foundation is certainly a very good reason indeed. It may be a decade since she's performed as a stand-up, but you'd never guess, and she's as sharp as ever. For the other ladies on the bill, who include Jo Brand, Julia Davis, Katy Brand,
Isy Suttie, and Roisin Conaty, she's still quite an inspiration.

The cream of the British comedy crop come together for this series of brand new comedy shorts for Sky1 HD. Following a season of dramatic 10 Minute Tales last Christmas, this December it's Comedy's turn to shine in an anthology of short films, written by and featuring 12 of the nation's biggest and most loved comic stars. With the likes of Stephen Fry, Catherine Tate, Julia Davis and Bill Bailey flexing their creative muscles they're the perfect bite-sized morsel of entertainment for you and your family this Christmas. Tonight it's the turn of Victoria Wood and Chris O'Dowd who get the season underway.

Video: Julia Davis sketch

Julia Davis is one of the famous faces appearing in Sky1's Little Crackers, a series of autobiographical shorts that portray embarrassing incidents from the past.

Produced by Baby Cow and featuring the likes of Steve Coogan and Julia Davis in future episodes, these delicious sub-half-hour productions recall a lost age of relatively low-budget TV treatment of the classics. In the opener, Johnny Vegas is perfectly cast as the put-upon Tolkachov, who visits his friend Murashkin (Mackenzie Crook) to deliver a spittle-flecked monologue full of pathos and purgatory about his put-upon working and domestic life, only to get more, or rather less, than he bargained for, in the apparently sympathetic Crook's eventual response.

Julia Davis bemoans dumbing down of TV comedy

Nighty Night creator and performer Julia Davis has complained about the lack of variety in British comedy programming on television, accusing commissioners of "trying to sanitise everything".

Julia Davis and Jessica Hynes Interview

The stars of Nighty Night and Spaced on how they turn 'nonsense' into comic gold.

A long overdue solo vehicle for the likeable Rob Brydon - one of our finest comedy actors (see his scene-stealing turns in Gavin & Stacey and supporting roles for the likes of Steve Coogan and Julia Davis), and also a gifted stand-up and impressionist (the latter of which he demonstrated hilariously in the 2005 film A Cock and Bull Story). The format is knowingly cheesy, with Brydon chatting in matey style to his main guest, before breaking off for a short set by a comedian and interlude from a musician - with whom the host is invariably tempted to join in.

Chat shows stand or fall by the quality of their guests and tonight's are top-drawer. Main conversationalist is "Dame" David Walliams, who discusses his marriage to model Lara Stone and obsession with James Bond, then reads from his recent children's book. Walliams also answer questions from Twitter users (token nod to being modern, there) and the studio audience - which sweetly includes his mother. The musical guest is Sir Tom Jones, who performs a song from his acclaimed gospel album Praise & Blame. The only weak link is the set by young stand-up Tom Deacon, but it would be churlish to complain about Brydon championing a rising comedian each week. At times this opening show has the slight awkwardness of a first date, but all in all, it's a comfortingly cosy and entertaining half-hour.

Dark Star: Julia Davis

Brutality, murder, sexual deviance and illness don't sound like the most promising subjects for comedy. But then Julia Davis is no ordinary comedian. In a rare interview, she talks about movies, motherhood and where the "dark" stuff comes form.

Lizzie and Sarah is a pilot for a new series by Jessica Hynes, née Stevenson, and Julia Davis, and so dark it makes deep space look like a copy of The White Album.

Both Lizzie and Sarah are fiftysomething housewives in marriages of dull horror, which they keep meticulously dusted and polished. Sarah's husband has sex with her with a pillow over her face - when he finishes, she says, meekly, "Thank you".

Lizzie is in thrall to her au pair, Benita. Huge, sullen and ripe, Benita sits in her bedroom demanding cheese toasties and leaving the door open while she has sex with Lizzie's husband.

When Lizzie's husband says he wants a divorce, Lizzie and Sarah go to a bar, get very, very, drunk, find a gun and accidentally start killing everyone who has wronged them.

"We must remember to stop killing now!" Sarah says, at one point, before killing again.

Although it is the nature of the human brain to sort things into order, it's impossible to work out who is best here - Hynes or Davis. Both are so brilliant at embodying the millimetre-thick cheeriness - brittle as insect carapace - that grows over decades of deep, blood-and-bone pain. Hynes makes Sarah's eyes as sad as an Old English sheepdog's. Davis gives Lizzie a mouth of nervous twitching and breathless dry laughter. That they're doing all this to comic effect is to remind you, yet again, how comedy really is superior to all other genres.

As if this weren't enough, Davis and Hynes also play two teenage girls in the show - all lipgloss, "Babe!" and bird-like opportunism. In one shot, Davis sucks her thumb in the most sullen and aggressive manner imaginable, as an act of triumph over Lizzie. It's only one second long, but if you wanted to point at the most perfect vignette of a certain kind of self-obsessed, post-X Factor 21st-century teenage girl, it's all there.

However, despite being one of the most startlingly original pilots of the past few years, the BBC broadcast it at 11.45pm on a Saturday night on BBC Two - the kind of place I might hide a dead body, or the Ark of the Covenant, if I really didn't want them discovered.

Just to recap here: Hynes is the co-creator and co-star of Spaced, one of the most popular, groundbreaking and influential comedies of the past ten years; Davis is the writer and star of Nighty Night, regarded, again, as one of the best comedy series of the past ten years.

I will be honest with you - this has made my Patriarchy Alarm Bell go off. I can't imagine two male comedy performers, of equal stature, being shunted into this kind of slot, with so little publicity. Obviously the BBC is suffering from some odd manner of broadcasting shellshock, and commissioning only the most timid and inoffensive of programmes, in some manner of abject pre-emptive cringe at the prospect of an incoming Tory government. I get all that.

But, really, it's hard not to echo the comments of Simon Pegg on Twitter: "Jeez Beeb - grow a pair!!"

Lizzie and Sarah was a Stygian comedy about the lives of sexless middle-aged women written and performed by Julia Davis and Jessica Hynes. Its broadcast reminded me of the line that the late great editor of the Sunday Express, John Junor, used on his writers: "Laddie, your piece is excellent - and if I were to publish it I would not change a word." BBC Two did not spike Lizzie and Sarah but it did put it out at 11.45pm on Saturday night. It was certainly strong stuff. (Sample line: "Oh, John loves big boobs. He always says I was two soggy old socks pre-children and with all the breast feeding and wotnot he just tells people I had a double mastectomy.") But Davis and Hynes, who cleverly also played two vacuous teenage girls whom their husbands do deign to lust over, were superb. The build up to a Thelma & Louise climax was fuelled by a high-octane anger. Henry Normal of Baby Cow who made the pilot tells me that he has not lost hope of its becoming a series. He'll be lucky. By Friday the BBC had not even confirmed it would be on iPlayer. If you missed it - and you probably did - you can, however, download it on iTunes.