Sharon Horgan

Sharon Horgan's effort was the pick of Sky1's latest lot of Little Crackers but honourable mentions must go to Paul O'Grady and Jason Manford.

It was great to see O'Grady back as Lily Savage, while Manford was very brave basing his tale on his own teenage circumcision.

He even got to dress up as a big-breasted blonde nurse. So maybe all that business on Skype was for research after all.

As ever in these media-saturated times, there is plenty for Charlie Brooker to sink his satirical teeth into over the last 12 months, though for once, not all of it has been bad. He'll be reflecting on the Olympics, the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, the jailing of members of Pussy Riot and, of course, the US presidential election in which the Republicans both scared us and added to the gaiety of nations. Limmy, Sharon Horgan and Peter Serafinowicz also contribute.

The seasonal series of autobiographical shorts goes out with a bang as two final celebs put dramatic flesh on the bones of a youthful memory. For actress Sharon Horgan, that means stepping into her mum's shoes for a spot of Christmas turkey plucking, while for Spy regular Darren Boyd, it takes the form of an emotionally scarring experience when a lad's moment in the spotlight at the school's Christmas concert clashes with his parents' social life.

Tonight's double header of autobiographical tales features Sharon Horgan and Darren Boyd. First, Horgan's story recalls Christmas 1984 on the family turkey farm. Young Sharon (Katherine Rose Morley) isn't looking forward to her time plucking turkeys until fellow plucker James (Sam Keeley) turns up. They flirt and arrange a date, but he fails to show, leading to a series of disasters for the Horgan family. At 9.30pm, Darren Boyd's tale tells of when he was chosen to sing at his school's Christmas concert.

Sharon Horgan: The black streak in everything I've done

The comedian and presenter on her convent education, ageing in high definition, and the art of plucking a turkey.

After the success of Chris O'Dowd's Moone Boy and Kathy Burke's Walking And Talking it was hard not to expect big things from Sky1's latest lot of Little Crackers.

But I can't see any of this year's first batch making it to a full series. Joanna Lumley's much-hyped look back at her early modelling days was particularly uninspiring. But with efforts from the likes of Paul O'Grady, Sharon Horgan and Jason Manford still to come this week perhaps we shouldn't give up all hope just yet.

Not even Julia Davis could rescue star-studded self-indulgence Bad Sugar, written by Peep Show duo Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong and the centrepiece of Channel 4's presumptuously-titled Funny Fortnight. The problem was the premise: a spoof of the telenovella, which, for the uninitiated, is a type of high-camp, short-form Spanish-language soap opera. Which prompts at least three questions: first, who has actually seen a high-camp, short-form Spanish-language soap opera? Second, why spoof a short-form, high-camp Spanish-language soap opera with British characters in a British locale? And finally, does high-camp, short-form Spanish soap opera not fall somewhere beside Donald Trump in the beyond-parody stakes? And so it was that, without any decent material to play with, a blue-chip cast (Davis, Sharon Horgan, Olivia Colman, Reece Shearsmith) mugged away exhaustingly. The pilot began with a fake "Previously on ..." montage, although I assume the corresponding "Next time on ..." montage was for real since a full series lies ahead. Which makes you wonder if all the good comedy commissioners have scarpered to Sky Atlantic.

Bad Sugar featured a power trio of comedy actresses and that was my first problem with this spoof, lampooning those big, throbbing family melodramas. To the best of my knowledge, Olivia Colman, Julia Davis and Sharon Horgan have never had their names attached to such overcooked tripe. That cannot debar them from making fun of it, but the pleasure of watching them is less because they don't bear the scars of rotten scripts past, like Hannah does. And my second problem with Bad Sugar, the tale of a wealthy mining dynasty and a battle for power involving a psycho, a drip and a gold-digging interloper? It wasn't remotely funny. The very least a spoof should be is a collection of half-decent jokes, but this was like a comedy version of Real Madrid's football gallacticos - great talent enlisted without a plan. Still, now they've appeared in a dud, our star trio can lampoon themselves with conviction at a later date.

Stereotypes abounded in Bad Sugar, a star-studded pilot spoof, written by Peep Show's Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong and based on telenovelas and old American TV soaps - Dynasty, Dallas], [i]The Bold and the Beautiful. Except this dysfunctional, filthy-rich family of lip-glossed gold-diggers and useless husbands was British, with a tight-fisted mining billionaire father at its helm. Julia Davis and Sharon Horgan performed their "rich bitch" parts perfectly adequately ("bitch is as bitch does"), as did Olivia Colman as an animal-loving frump. Given everyone's calibre, this wasn't as funny as you might have expected. There were some good lines - when Davis's daughter ran to her in her nightdress, crying, "Mummy, I'm scared", Davis retorted: "Tell teddy about it. He'll listen." But I suspect watching repeats of Joan Collins's Dynasty might actually be funnier.

Mangling accents and genres with glee, Bad Sugar is one of the more promising pilots of C4's Funny Fortnight. Starring three-headed comedy hydra Julia Davis, Sharon Horgan and Olivia Colman, it's equal parts telenovela, costume drama and pseudo-glossy, 'Dallas'-style family saga. The plotting - centred around the will of an ageing patriarch (David Bradley) and the scheming of his three children (plus Horgan's cuckoo in the nest, Lucy) - is self-consciously ridiculous. But Bad Sugar is sustained by a host of brilliant performances. In addition to the above, look out for Kayvan Novak (dim gardener Simon) and Peter Serafinowicz (closeted son Rolf). Tonight, the fingers of Colman's piano-playing naif Joan are mangled by a red-hot boule ball; the absurdity can only escalate when a full series airs next year.