Sharon Horgan

Q&A with Jeremy Dyson and Sharon Horgan

Will Psychobitches have a male spin-off in the future, Psychobastards? Writer-director Jeremy Dyson let the question hang in the air a second, revealing the suggestion has been raised as 'a semi-serious thing', before adding 'but the point of this is that it's women. Hitler's been done to death...'

Can the format of Psychobitches really sustain a series? While it's fair to say that returns do diminish somewhat, there are still plenty of chuckles, what with Sharon Horgan's desperate Virginia Woolf and a slatternly, pie-guzzling Diana Dors finding herself face to face with the real Marilyn Monroe. It's limited but fun, which is more than you can really say for Up the Women.

Psychobitches is a series born out of popular acclaim for last year's pilot. Rebecca Front plays an In Treatment-style shrink for famous females from history, and it was a cracking opener, right from the first moment when Rosa Parks needed a seat in the waiting room and everyone quickly jumped up.

I'm always in the market for a pastiche of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, and the one here, featuring Frances Barber as Bette Davis, and Mark Gatiss dragged up as Joan Crawford, was high-camp nirvana. Other highlights included Samantha Spiro as a fey, infuriating Audrey Hepburn, Sharon Horgan's Eva Perón, suffering from "feelings of grandiosity", and the Brontë sisters transformed into bonnet-wearing, foul-mouthed Chucky dolls.

A few of the short sketches needed to be even shorter - as in 100% shorter. On the whole, though, what a treat, to the point where I started hallucinating. It felt as though the screen was glowing, as if I were in a sci-fi movie, where an all-female (sorry, Mark Gatiss) comedy mothership suddenly appears, illuminated and throbbing, the door opening to reveal none other than Emily Wilding Davison laughing her bloomers off. But then I got over myself. It's quite enough that Psychobitches was indisputably funny.

Unfortunate title aside, Psychobitches is a wonderfully original idea - what if famous women through the centuries were alive today and seeking treatment from a psychotherapist? In a quasi-sketch format using the talents of 10 credited writers, it's a neat construct that allows writers' imaginations free rein, unconstrained by time, place or actual facts, and gives a roll call of talented actresses (and the occasional bloke) a chance to do their very best impersonations.

Last night's opener of a five-part series (expertly directed by The League of Gentlemen's Jeremy Dyson) started with Rosa Parks, not on the couch but "here for my appointment" in a glorious blink-and-you'll miss-it sight gag, where all the other women in the waiting room jumped up to offer her their seat. Actually being therapised, as it were, in the Sigmund Freud-style office, were (among others) an irritatingly winsome Audrey Hepburn (Sam Spiro), a grandiose Eva Peron (Sharon Horgan) and a self-obsessed Sylvia Plath (Julia Davis).

Plath was trying out a new writing persona in which she donned her grandmother's dress and wig and morphed into Pam Ayres - "I wish I'd looked after me toes/ Not treated them like they were foes" - one of many moments in this half-hour when I laughed out loud. It was an inspired gag. Equally good were the scenes involving the bickering Brontë sisters; Anne (Sarah Solemani) was meek but knowing, while Charlotte (Selina Griffiths) was withering about Emily (Katy Brand) needing to lose her virginity, or, as she put it in her broad Yorkshire vowels, "She should fuck off to Keighley on a Friday night and lose it to a cowhand and do us all a fucking favour."

Among the mix was Mark Gatiss and Frances Barber hamming it up marvellously as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, in full What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? mode, endlessly outdoing each other in the meanness stakes, while Rebecca Front's therapist - an unshowy part that could easily go unnoticed in this parade of misfits - was nicely pitched. There was the occasional miss, but overall this was a joy.

Sharon Horgan: "I love being a Psychobitch"

Having penned and starred in some of the funniest recent TV shows, Sharon Horgan is stunned when people claim "women just aren't funny".

After a promising pilot last year, this fitfully funny set of vignettes based around famous women visiting a therapist (Rebecca Front) returns as a series. Boasting comedic talent such as Sharon Horgan, Samantha Spiro, Julia Davis, Katy Brand and Mark Gatiss - dragged up as Joan Crawford - it's a riot when it does very silly: Sylvia Plath channelling Pam Ayres in an attempt to lift her dark moods; the squabbling, doll-sized Brontë sisters, and Jacqueline du Pré communicating only via cello.

This Playhouse Presents... production from last year returns for a series, boasting the same strengths and weaknesses as its pilot. It's undeniably pretty slight - the single, running gag is seeing absurdly exaggerated caricatures of famous historical women visit Rebecca Front's modern shrink and flaunt their entertaining neuroses. But the joke is carried through with enough conviction and élan to make it pretty entertaining.

Tonight's highlight is Julia Davis's turn as Sylvia Plath - but a Sylvia Plath who, concerned that her creativity might be compromising her mental health, is considering adopting the poetry stylings of Pam Ayres. Elsewhere, there are foul-mouthed Brontë sisters, an infuriating Audrey Hepburn and the endless bitching of Bette Midler and Joan Crawford. The cast is excellent - Davis, Front and Sharon Horgan are now augmented by Frances Barber and Mark Gatiss - and they're clearly enjoying themselves too. Good fun.

Psychobitches, stars Rebecca Front as a therapist whose patient roster consists solely of famous women from throughout history. Essentially an excuse for a fast-paced series of disconnected sketches, this simple premise is only semi-successfully executed by co-writer/director Jeremy Dyson from The League of Gentlemen.

Resembling a surreal parody of the great In Treatment, the series begins with a neat visual gag involving Rosa Parks - I suspect that's the first and last time I'll ever place those words in that order - before roaring into gear with Front's Grandma's House co-star Samantha Spiro delivering a pitch-perfect evisceration of Audrey Hepburn's irritatingly kooky screen persona.

Unfortunately, it then devotes far too much time to a mirthless series of Brontë sisters sketches - no, it wouldn't be hilarious if they were portrayed as gruff, foul-mouthed northerners - and Julia Davis as Sylvia Plath, which, while beautifully performed, hammers its one joke into the ground. Elsewhere, Frances Barber and a dragged-up Mark Gatiss (Dyson's League of Gentlemen cohorts crop up throughout the series) sell the hell out of a warring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, but without banishing memories of French & Saunders' superior take on their feud. The only other sketch that really takes flight is Sharon Horgan as a glamorously self-obsessed Eva Peron.

As an excuse for a cast of talented, funny women to show off their versatility, Psychobitches is a success. But reducing Front to a straight role feels like a waste of her abilities, which merely adds to the overall air of mild disappointment.