Olivia Colman

Flowers: Channel 4's peculiar, poetic comedy treat

Sad, strange and very funny comedy drama Flowers stars Olivia Colman and Julian Barratt.

Channel 4 are broadcasting this new sitcom every night this week. I don't like that approach. It's like a cowardly version of "bingeing". Netflix and boxsets allow you to binge in the proper sense: watching episodes without any breaks, conversation or daylight. That's how you properly binge-watch. Having a new episode each day must be terrestrial TV's version, but no - either bombard us so we can wallow like pigs, or drip-feed us an episode once a week, lending it some nice anticipation.

So does this new series merit the special treatment of a daily outing? On paper it should: it has an impressive cast (Olivia Colman and Julian Barratt are the stars) and it's a dark comedy about an eccentric family. The father has bungled his suicide and the mother is frantically cheerful, her manic persona hiding unhappiness and sexual frustration. Their household also contains two weird and warring adult children, a senile granny, and a boyish Japanese assistant.

Tonight, the family are thrown together to celebrate mum and dad's anniversary but the dark comedy never quite darkens enough and seems zany rather than black and clever.

Black comedy normally draws on a juxtaposition between disturbing subject matter and glib humour. Instead, Will Sharpe's six-part series - set in the shambolic rural home of the Flowers family (played by Julian Barrat, Olivia Colman, Daniel Rigby and Sophia Di Martino) and screening every evening across the week - intermingles its knotty and desperately sad plot with the kind of comedy that litters our lives no matter what state they are in. The heartbreaking and hilarious result sets a new standard for situation comedies everywhere.

Unknown writer gets his big TV break with Flowers

Will Sharpe was born in London but until the age of eight he lived in Tokyo. He was educated at Winchester College, then went to Cambridge, where he read classics and joined the university's dramatic club, Footlights, subsequently spending a year with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

TV preview: Flowers, C4

This is not your conventional sitcom then, but nor is it anything like Camping or The Mighty Boosh. It's sitcomland but tipped off its axis in a different direction. There are moments which will make you laugh - particularly the house party from hell in the first episode - but this is a series that stretches the genre to snapping point.

Coming soon to Channel 4 (25 April, same day as Game of Thrones - squeeeee) is the very peculiar Flowers. I'm strangely drawn to it, even though I'm not 100 per cent sure I like it yet.

Julian Barratt of The Mighty Boosh and Olivia Colman of everything else star as unhappily married couple Maurice and Deborah Flowers. They live in a tumbledown house in the country with their dysfunctional grown-up children and a young Japanese illustrator called Shun (played by the show's writer, Will Sharpe), who draws the pictures for Maurice's children's books.

It feels a bit out of time, a touch Royal Tenenbaums-y, and it's hard to sense the tone from episode one. But Barratt is all charisma with a churning internal maelstrom and Colman is typically brilliant at Deborah's vulnerability and quiet fury. Plus she gets to wear some pretty fantastic capes. All in all, I'm on board, if a bit confounded. I want to see more.

Olivia Colman: Being fancied made me nervous

Olivia Colman will be seen later this month in Channel 4's dark comedy Flowers. In the comedy, her character Deborah has an admirer who lusts after her, something which the Broadchurch and Night Manager star revealed at a press screening made her "nervous and giggly".

Everything you need to know about Flowers

Today Channel 4 announced details of their new dark new sitcom Flowers that partners Broadchurch's Olivia Colman and The Mighty Boosh's Julian Barratt.

Peep Show is brilliant and has been consistently brilliant apart from one poor series. If memory serves, it was the sixth where Mark tries to come to terms with being a father. That plot didn't work and the show has wisely kept mentions of his son to a minimum since, although that might be because the baby's mother was played by Olivia Colman and she's now off in Broadchurch, weeping in an orange anorak.

So this series has brought back all the classic elements: Mark and Jez are living together again, both single, dissatisfied and arguing about the boiler's settings. It is restored to its angsty, tetchy brilliance.

Viewers might have been surprised by last week's revelations about Jeremy's love life - with him suddenly announcing he had sex with a man, having always been strictly heterosexual apart from one woozy memory of a drugged encounter with Super Hans - and so this week attention turns to Mark's affairs of the heart which are always far more predictable.

April, the girl Mark met in a shoe shop and pursued/stalked at her university, is launching a book. Mark uses this as an excuse to get in touch, but is discomfited when she asks if she can bring her husband along.