Sharon Horgan

Interview: Catastrophe's back

In the first season of brilliant Channel 4 sitcom Catastrophe, Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney nearly killed us with funny via their accidental pregnancy-fuelled love struggle. They're back - and love hasn't got any easier, they tell Hannah Dunleavy.

Stars of Catastrophe discuss the comedy's new series

Series 1 was a surprise hit, and now British sitcom Catastrophe returns for a second round of heart-warming humour and chaos. Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney chat about 'unsexy' sex scenes and the challenge of keeping love alive.

Catastrophe: romcom that banned the words 'I love you'

A hit on British TV making its American debut on Amazon Prime, this collaboration between Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney about a surprise pregnancy is a cultural crossbreed - and very funny.

Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan interview

Everyone on Twitter knows who Rob Delaney is -- the acerbic Boston-bred comic is one of the platform's most ubiquitous voices -- and everyone across the pond is in love with the smart, sharp humor of Irish comedian Sharon Horgan. Now, the two comics have joined forces for the hilarious new Amazon sitcom, Catastrophe. Even though Delaney and Horgan are both Twitter superstars, don't expect the social media platform to have anything at all to do with the show.

Catastrophe hits Facebook before coming to Amazon Prime

Catastrophe, a British comedy series written by and starring Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan, is coming to America. It will arrive for Amazon Prime subscribers on Friday, June 19th, but before it gets there, it is taking a quick detour to Facebook. The premiere episode of Catastrophe will be available on Facebook for 48 hours before it heads to Amazon.

Back to 2006 for the first episode of Sharon Horgan and Dennis Kelly's sitcom about three filthy wastrels from Penge. Donna (Horgan), drifting towards marriage with rancid manchild Karl (Cavan Clerkin), realises on her hen night that she's got a lot of aimless partying still to do with her pals (Tanya Franks and Rebekah Staton). The extent to which female characters get all the funny lines by revealing their rotten souls would still feel groundbreaking today. And this opener is flab-free: one killer scene after another.

Sharon Horgan to write HBO series

Sharon Horgan's comedy pilot Divorce, which stars Sarah Jessica Parker, is to be made into a full series by HBO.

This enduring Radio 4 show is one of those excellent ideas that seems glaringly obvious once someone else has thought of it. The basic concept is a hostless chat show; an initial guest chooses a sparring partner who, the following week, chooses another, and so it goes on in a cheerful human centipede of chat. This series began with Adam Buxton talking to Reece Shearsmith and has passed through a range of comedy luminaries, including Vic Reeves and Sharon Horgan.

The idea behind Chain Reaction, if you haven't listened (why?), is that last week's interviewee becomes next week's interviewer, so we get a long list of famous people (usually comedians or actors) interviewed by a similar person who they admire or have worked with. Each person's interview technique is very different, so the show is hit and miss. The last two week's programmes, which featured Bob Mortimer interviewing Vic Reeves, and then Vic Reeves talking to Olivia Colman, have been tricky listens. I love Reeves and Mortimer but they don't do interviews, really. When they were together it was funny but utterly random; when Reeves talked to Colman, I had to switch off. He had no questions; he didn't really listen to the answers. Argh! It was frustrating.

This week, Colman talked to Sharon Horgan, and I enjoyed the whole show. Colman managed to take the mickey out of the interviewing process ("Do you have a favourite sibling? Do you have a favourite child?") and also get revealing answers. Revealing of both Horgan and herself, which made up a bit for the week before. So we learned that Colman can't cope with too much to do (and then her husband points out that what she's worrying about could be done in a hour), that Horgan prefers writing to acting, and that despite being born in England she considers herself Irish - "it's very important to me that I'm Irish". The chat brought out the contrast between Horgan's career-minded pragmatism and Colman's family-comes-first attitude. As well as both women's wit. Colman was a great host. Give her a show. Nurture the "talent". Manage it.