Sharon Horgan

Sharon Horgan is a favourite of ours and this sitcom - deservedly in its second series - shows off her acting and writing talents superbly.

The show is never far away from a shocking moment but it's all done in the best possible tastelessness. It is packed with plot and scenes of clever farce but also has time for lots of well-observed, dry dialogue. What the characters say is funny when they think they're being funny and equally funny when they think they're being serious.

Sharon Horgan Q+A Interview

Digital Spy has a quick series two question and answers session with the writer and star.

If any theme has emerged from this range of Comedy Showcases, it has been to see how far the boundaries of taste can be pushed. Here, Stephen Mangan and Sharon Horgan play theatrical agents who have been bruised by past relationships and are now having an unsatisfactory nonaffair driven by his need to sleep on her sofa. He is traumatised with guilt for abandoning his children and she feels responsible for the death of her fiancé. Both are needy, only their needs are different. There is a good deal of snappy banter between the two, but Anthony Head as their boss steals the show as a pervy old goat out of whose mouth pours an unending stream of uncensored filth. It's like being confronted by an erection on screen - more amazing than shocking.

There's little funnier than other people's emotional damage and the consequent mess they make of things, so Chris Niel's tale of two colleagues - he an estranged dad, she lately availed of a dead fiance - who have casual sex and have to deal with the aftermath is very funny indeed. Sharon Horgan (Pulling and Angelo's) and Green Wing's Stephen Mangan star as the pair, with Anthony Head their coke-snorting, sex-crazed boss ("You've been bashing some gash, haven't you?"). Who knew Rupert Giles from Buffy could be so foul-mouthed? To think he kissed Joyce Summers with that mouth.

Sharon Horgan Interview

An in-depth 2007 interview with writer and star Sharon Horgan, from The Observer.

Pulling stars Sharon Horgan as Donna, a bride-to-be who gets cold feet, cancels her wedding and moves in with two single girlfriends, Karen and Louise.

Do not be put off by the set-up, which evokes dark memories of the Denise Van Outen monstrosity Babes In the Wood, nor by the feeble title and its similarity to the lame Friends rip-off Coupling. Pulling is the sharpest, freshest and boldest comedy of the year, immaculately written and beautifully performed by a uniformly excellent cast.

Like many of the best comedies, Pulling is actually a study in desperation and despair. However the writers - Horgan and Dennis Kelly - clearly have deep affection for the characters they heap misery and misfortune upon.

Jilted fiance Karl's nervous breakdown was simultaneously one of the funniest and the saddest scenes I've ever seen, almost matched by alcoholic primary school teacher Louise's tear drenched reading of Hug to an audience of five-year-olds. "They cry all the time" was Louise's response at being automatically suspended.

Pulling avoids the stock comic characters that usually populate the sitcom single scene and finds its comedy in surprising and unexpected places. Most importantly, its portrayal of relationships and the dynamics within them, is uncomfortably recognisable. It is amazing what a shot of truth can achieve in a comedy.