Sarah Solemani

This week, in Sky's showcase for emerging talent, Isy Suttie, AKA Peep Show's Dobby, co-writes and stars in a short, surreal "musical", Miss Wright, about a cafe worker besotted with a railway station employee. The songs don't help. Better is Aphrodite Fry, scripted by seasoned playwright Sarah Solemani of Him & Her, about a Brighton artist disappointed by an extremely short sexual encounter with a local businessman, who hatches a plot to mete out the same treatment to his colleague: to "come and go", so to speak.

Isy Suttie (Peep Show's Dobby) kicks off tonight's brace of romantic comedies as Miss Wright, a café waitress whose amorous fantasies break out into song whenever a certain ticket collector puffs into view. In Aphrodite Fry, Sarah Solemani (Him & Her) stars as a mural artist for whom a brusque one-night stand leads her to contemplate the shortcomings and goings of life. They make a sharp and funny pair, with splendid support turns from Rebekah Staton and Rosamund Hanson.

It's a pleasure to see talented writers and performers given their head in this Sky short film strand. The format offers freedom but demands concision and invention too - tonight's offerings from Isy Suttie and Sarah Solemani exploit the opportunity gleefully.

First up is Suttie, starring as dopey, charming dreamer Bella - working in the café of a tiny train station, challenging the romantic pragmatism of her boss, friend and rival Jenny (Rebekah Staton) and occasionally, bursting into song. As a cheerful musing on small towns and crap jobs, it packs plenty into its 25 minutes.

Then at 9.30pm there's Sarah Solemani's Aphrodite Fry. Stung by the poor sexual etiquette of a one-night stand, Aphrodite sets out to prove that women can 'cum and go' too. For this purpose, she selects an apparently charmless partner (Alex Price's Bobby, a man whose dreams are to 'make lots of money and meet Mike Tindall'). But inevitably, she discovers frailty and humanity within this unpromising raw material.

Both films are slight and not without their flaws and self-indulgences, but they overflow with charm too.

Sarah Solemani: Funny, frank and doing it for the girls

From Him & Her to Bad Education, Sarah Solemani is a sitcom staple. And now she's finally being allowed to write her own scripts, too, she tells Alice Jones.

Another impressive double-bill of one-off comedies about modern love opens tonight with comedian actress Isy Suttie (Peep Show) starring in Miss Wright, which she co-wrote with Fergus March. Using her signature shtick of comedy, storytelling and song, Sutie plays Bella Wright, a waitress in a train station cafeteria who has a crush on the platform guard, Jim (Alex Carter). Even better is Aphrodite Fry, written by and starring Sarah Solemani. She plays eccentric, boiler-suit-wearing Aphrodite, a Brighton artist who after an unfortunate sexual encounter decides to tackle gender inequality in her own way.

Sarah Solemani on quirky new comedy Aphrodite Fry

This engaging segment of Sky Living's Love Matters season is written by and features Sarah Solemani, the award-winning star of Him & Her and Bad Education.

There are so many dramas that drop us in on couples' relationships where you can't imagine what they saw in each other in the first place, that it comes as a surprise when you're confronted with a pair of living, breathing lovers.

So my nomination for Most Believable TV Couple Of The Year 2012 (they won last year, too) goes to Steve and Becky from Him & Her, as portrayed in all their grubby, glorious affection by Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani. They're not the usual portrait of love's young dream but there's not a heartbeat when you don't believe they are made for each other.

The third series of Him & Her has seen Steve and Becky's relationship picking up a gear, the over-arching storyline - inasmuch as a slacker comedy can muster an overarching story-line - built on Steve's plans to propose. So last night's penultimate episode took the bold step of taking us right back to the roots of their relationship. Seventeen episodes is a long time to wait to see how they first got together and it could have come a cropper. But it was a comic gem.

Writer Stefan Golaszewski gave his stars plenty of empty spaces to shuffle around each other nervously and you could almost touch the awkwardness. Tovey and Solemani were note-perfect as a pair who couldn't quite believe they fancy the bones off each other, wondering if anyone would ever make the first move.

It was all about the chemistry, and these two could bottle it up and sell it. Catch up with them before next week's finale - it's a corker.

The weekend schedules are packed with choice comedy at the moment. Like Him and Her, which is back on BBC3 for a third series. A little bit Royle Family (Becky and Steve never leave the flat), a little bit Gavin & Stacey, with a hefty dollop of toilet humour, it maintains just the right balance between scuzzy and warm and fuzzy.

Stefan Golaszewski's beautifully observed scripts spin something adorable out of nothing. This week's episode boiled down to Becky and Steve trying to find a can of beer to drink while watching Children in Need. Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani give lovely, self-effacing performances in the central roles but, as is traditional in sitcom, it is the social climber character - Becky's sister Laura, now with added smug pregnancy hormones - who steals the best lines. She kisses everyone on both cheeks, drinks only plum juice and, when handed a mobile phone that isn't quite up to scratch, pouts, "Now, how does one unlock a Nokia?" A marvellous monster.

BBC3's cult hit returns for a third series, as disgustingly funny as ever. If you've yet to have the pleasure, our (anti) heroes are a couple called Becky (Sarah Solemani) and Steve (Russell Tovey), who spend their days loafing around their dingy, dirty flat, sharing everything from their toilet habits to the stale sausage roll they discover down the back of the sofa.

Equally repugnant - if less endearing - are their friends and family: Becky's vindictive sister (pregnancy seems to have made her meaner), her blockhead of a fiancé and the bloke from upstairs who looks like he hasn't seen a bath since the 90s. Tonight's double bill begins with a sparkly ring and a bottle of bubbly - and is as refreshingly unromantic as ever.

A very welcome new series for this still-life of a domestic sitcom which - if it didn't feel like damning with faint praise - could easily be described as the jewel in BBC3's crown. So little happens in an average episode of Him & Her that the format begins to seem almost audacious. Tonight, Becky has a hangover which, along with a visit from the ever-tiresome Laura and Paul and the usual looming presence of Dan, conspires to prevent Steve from presenting the wedding ring which he has hidden in the plastic bag cupboard. But despite this potentially rather significant development, the plotting feels happily beside the point - this is carried by the spot-on, naturalistic dialogue and likeable, intuitive performances from leads Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani.