Olivia Colman

Up The Women (BBC4) also [like Psychobitches]] has fine performances by funny women, including Rebecca Front, and Jessica Hynes, who wrote it too. Hynes is a favourite of mine. It was a travesty that her wonderful nightmare PR character in Twenty Twelve was beaten to the Bafta by Olivia Colman (it was also a travesty that the overrated Twenty Twelve got the comedy Bafta ahead of Hynes's mate Julia Davis's way-more-brilliant Hunderby ... God, this is just all the same names coming up over and over again). Fans of Spaced may disagree, but on the basis of this, she's a better comic performer than she is a comic writer. They are, after all, totally different skills; writers and actors tend to be very different people.

It's not bad, it's just a bit staid. The fact that it's centred on a non-typical sitcom subject (the suffragette movement) can't disguise that it is a rather ordinary, old-fashioned sitcom. The door opens, someone comes in, does a gag, cue studio audience laughter. There's less living-room audience laughter in my house, certainly a lot less than in Psychobitches.

Life's amazeballs for Twenty Twelve's Jessica Hynes

She lost out to co-star Olivia Colman at the Baftas, but Jessica Hynes has lots to keep her happy, including two new sitcoms and a possible Twenty Twelve spin-off.

With a career ranging from Peep Show to Broadchurch, Olivia Colman is a national treasure-in-waiting. She's on Norton's sofa for a well-earned break before duplicating herself for a double appearance at 8pm on Sunday - popping on a bonnet in The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher and glamming up for the Baftas, hosted by Norton himself, to see if she's won a gong for comedy and/or drama (BBC1). Alongside Colman tonight are Lord 'The Apprentice' Sugar, Hugh 'House' Laurie and Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson.

Is Olivia Colman Britain's most versatile actress?

Gerard Gilbert talks to the comedy queen about her new role in 'the British Killing'.

Marriage is hell, divorce is heaven and breakdown is a purgatory in between. I Give It A Year, a London-set comedy, is as patchy as a troubled marriage, glum one moment and hysterical the next. Judged by the press show, it sorts those recognising and responding to its take on matrimony from those not. Silence in row A, happy uproar in row B, nervous giggles in row C ...

I loved Stephen Merchant's tactless, blue-joking wedding speaker who sends the party's cringe thermometer through the roof. Rafe Spall (boorishly extrovert while simultaneously little-boy-lost) and Rose Byrne (vulnerably sophisticated) are a match made in the world's worst match factory, crafted to strike a brief, flaring light, then sputter and fizzle. Anna Faris, sweet and pretty-plain, and Simon Baker, a smoothie made from forbidden fruits, are the interloper tempters.

There is a very funny malfunctioning threesome scene, illustrating the asymmetrical warfare of the DIY mini-orgy. (One person always gets dumped on the bedroom floor.) And writer-director Dan Mazer (Borat, Brüno) has an unsparing skill at pushing comic situations to the pain barrier and beyond. These include a relationship counsellor (Olivia Colman) whose own relationship, judged by her off-office screams down a phone line, needs all the counselling it can get.

Olivia Colman interview

Olivia Colman talks about her new film Hyde Park On Hudson, hanging out with Bill Murray and why Hollywood hasn't come calling.

British comedy awards: worthy winners?

There was plenty to howl about at last night's comedy awards. But while Olivia Colman and Cuckoo missed out, there were well-deserved gongs for The Thick of It, Hunderby and Reeves & Mortimer.

As television's best-lubricated and worst-mannered awards ceremony, the British Comedy Awards are often the most fun to watch. While boisterous comics make amusing thank you speeches or heckle each other, it can take all of Jonathan Ross's sangfroid to keep proceedings under control.

This year you could be forgiven for not having seen some of the most nominated programmes. For instance, not many tuned in to E4's beautifully acted sketch show Cardinal Burns, but it gets nods for three awards, and quite right, too. Sky Atlantic's little-watched Hunderby is up for two. Even BBC2's The Thick of It (three), while a triumph, was no ratings blockbuster.

Other shining comic talents include Harry Hill (for the farewell series of TV Burp) and the wondrous Olivia Colman, who gets not one but two nominations as best comedy actress. If she doesn't win for one of them, there should be a stewards' inquiry.