Vicki Pepperdine

Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan - Terri in The Thick Of It - are back on duty for a third series of the deliciously downbeat hospital comedy. With an eye for detail that packs a hypodermic punch, it's a bleakly comic picture of an NHS bedevilled by jargon and box-ticking, with 'cultural diversity cupcakes' the least of Nurse Kim and Sister Den's mounting problems. If you didn't laugh you'd cry.

Getting On is a tiny triumph, a mournful, relentlessly downbeat sitcom that isn't actually funny but somehow makes you laugh even while you're pummelled by its bleak portrait of the NHS.

Its three writers and stars - Vicki Pepperdine, the Bafta-winning Jo Brand, and Joanna Scanlan - return to a new ward and a new health trust in the third series. But nothing much has changed.

Dr Pippa Moore (Pepperdine) is painfully self-obsessed and lacking in empathy ("I've had a mini-break to celebrate my decree nisi"), nurse Kim (Brand) cares but is buried by a landslide of political correctness, while sister Den (Scanlan) tries to keep her head above the jargon.

At times it seems that everyone talks but no one listens, and there are some comically excruciating scenes involving the clipped and hopeless Pippa as she tries to discuss her female genitalia project.

A third series for the scalpel-sharp comedy set in a geriatric ward. Co-written by its stars Jo Brand, Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine, it manages to veer between the truthful and the ridiculous in capturing life in an efficiency-driven NHS hospital. Stoic Nurse Kim Wilde (Brand), fraught Sister Den Flixter (Scanlan) and officious Doctor Pippa Moore (Pepperdine) are now working out of a new ward, K2, at a hospital, St Jude's, close to their old one. The equipment might be better but the familiar issues remain among their sick, dying and occasionally hypochondriac patients.

Return of the dry medical comedy starring and written by Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan, and set in the geriatric ward of an NHS hospital. Kim, Den and Pippa move to ward K2 in St Jude's while their own hospital closes for a possible (but in no way guaranteed) refurb. Meanwhile, Pippa is causing her usual brand of chaos/inconvenience (inchaosvenience?) - dumping her baggage, figuratively and literally, all over her colleagues. Perfectly judged performances and great writing.

In case you hadn't noticed, we've dipped under 100 days to go to the Olympics - so here's hoping this thoroughly amusing satire set in the office of the Olympics Deliverance Team isn't too close to the truth. Once again Jessica Hynes's horrifyingly stupid PR woman Siobhan Sharpe steals the show: in this final episode her efforts to look cool in front of a rapper has echoes of Ab Fab's Eddie, but the highlight is when she's flummoxed by guest star Vicki Pepperdine (Getting On), who turns about to be a hilariously forthright adviser for Sharpe's Olympics village sexual health campaign.

Phil Whelan's new comedy imagines an exploration in space, the colonisation of a new planet, the making of a new and better society. What makes it funny is that its characters are (and remain) all too recognisably human. So when the leader of the expedition dies on the journey and his second-in-command takes over, there's bound to be a bit of jostling for precedence, especially as Brian, the notional new leader, thinks a nice meeting can sort most things out. He's about to learn a lot. Nicholas Lyndhurst, Vicki Pepperdine and Tom Goodman-Hill star.

The second series of the sitcom set in an NHS geriatric ward opened up even darker, richer seams of black comedy than the first. Written by and starring Jo Brand (world-weary Nurse Kim Wilde), Vicki Pepperdine (tactless Dr Pippa Moore) and Joanna Scanlan (Sister Den Flixter), it was directed by The Thick of It's Peter Capaldi - and the influence of the political comedy was evident in every frame. The posturings of hierarchy and bureaucratic idiocy were skewered relentlessly, scatological humour was allied to brutal deadpan, and the timing was perfect. Getting On also hid a beating heart at its centre that gave it surprising emotional power.

It's a girls' night out at London's Theatre Royal as Victoria Wood is joined on stage by some very funny ladies in aid of The British Heart Foundation.

While raising awareness about heart disease in women (see, the show's title makes sense now), the Queen of Comedy and her cohorts will tickle our funny bones with stand-up, sketches and music.

The line-up includes Nighty Night's Julia Davis; Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine from BBC Four's Getting On; Jessica Hynes of Spaced fame; rising star Andi Oshi; and the two Brands, Jo and Katy. Not Russell Brand's new pop star wife - the other one. The one with the Big Ass.

Getting On: my triumvirate of heroines

Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and Jo Scanlan have gifted us a TV classic with their touchingly comic window on the NHS.