Vicki Pepperdine

A welcome second series for this bleak comedy set in a geriatric ward. It's co-written by Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and The Thick of It's Joanna Scanlan, who all star. Scanlan's Denise is bovine and grouchy, Brand's Kim perplexed and old-fashioned, and Pepperdine's Pippa neurotic and self-centred. Tonight, a homeless lady is wheeled in unconscious and then passed around like a hot potato, while a visiting daughter becomes increasingly irate at being lied to about her mother's treatment. Around all this swirl incompetent orderlies and inept students. It's great to see a trio of women at the creative helm of this brave and, at times, very funny show.

Three episodes were simply not enough for the first series of Jo Brand, Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine's beautifully observed black comedy set in a NHS geriatric ward. Now it's back with a series that's twice as long, opening with the three once again running around straitjacketed by pointless protocol as a pongy homeless woman is wheeled through the doors of B4.

This finely crafted comedy transfers over from BBC4. It's only a mini-series - perhaps the powers that be will see how it fares this time round and commission more - but for an understated yet sharp sitcom, it can't be beaten. It's set on NHS Ward B4, a place where old folks go to wither away and where the staff also look as though they have seen their best years. From this unremarkable setting, the three writers-actors - Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan - have created a comic gem, knowing that while a note of pathos is fine it still has to be funny.

Jo Brand stars as Nurse Kim Wilde in this very funny, improvised comedy set in a geriatric ward, where the main business is getting on with the daily round of bowel movements and hip problems. She's the junior member of a team that includes Sister Den Flixter and Dr Pippa Moore, played by Brand's co-writers Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine. In episode one, they are about to be joined by a new male matron. The series has previously been shown on BBC Four, and has two Bafta nominations to its credit.

Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan's superb sitcom, shown on BBC4 last year, is set in an NHS old people's ward and has to be beautifully written to avoid being, well, worthy. Fortunately, it is easily funny enough. So much so, the viewer can be really punched in the face by the poignancy. It is extremely well-acted too.

Shown a year ago on BBC4, here's a much-deserved terrestrial repeat for this black-as-the-grave hospital comedy. An understaffed backwater of the NHS, B4 is the kind of ward where you're either afraid you're going to die, or, worse, worried that you might not.

Written by the cast - Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlan - it's filmed in a documentary style, under unforgiving lighting and shot through with cold-eyed truth.

On B4, a lethal combination of self-interest, red tape, paperwork and political correctness conspire to ensure that nothing, least of all patient care, can be achieved. And that concept is perfectly encapsulated tonight by the drama of a poo on a chair.

Only three episodes were produced in this first series a second series of six episodes is now in the pipeline for this autumn. That will be on BBC4 as well - in case you thought it was only the NHS that made incomprehensible decisions...

Toilet humour. It isn't big and it isn't clever. But who cares when the brilliant Getting On, which I'm missing already, can turn the humble stool into a rich source of wipe-away-the-tears mirth?

This bleakly endearing geriatric ward comedy has only had a three episode run but richly deserves a full length series: with nurse Kim, sister Den and Dr Moore, writer/stars Jo Brand, Joanna Scanlan and Vicki Pepperdine have created an unforgettable trio. It helps, of course, if you like your potty humour wrapped up in a quilted loo roll of sophistication.

Taking revenge on neurotic meddler Dr Moore, Den decides to tamper with her precious report on patient faeces. A simple word substitution does the trick. 'What's another word for faeces?' queries Den. 'My youngest calls them plop plops,' offers Kim. Cue the following: 'The chart demonstrated construct validity for characterising stool function together with concurrent validity for characterising frequency of plop plops.' It cracks me up just typing it.

This, sadly, is the final episode of Jo Brand & Co's superlative series. Because it is based on mood, inflection and myriad flashes of acute observation, Getting On is almost as difficult to describe as a piece of music. Certainly there are headline events in each episode - tonight, for example, there is a "conflict resolution strategy meeting" and an argument about who won the raffle - but it's the interaction of the characters around these events that is so accurate and funny and wonderful. It is bound to be recommissioned; nobody would be mad enough to let something this good slip through the cracks. When that happens, I hope they continue to go for accuracy rather than leaning towards laughter, because it was the truthfulness that made it so extraordinary.

It's the final episode of Jo Brand's blacker-than-black comedy set on an NHS geriatric ward, and what a missed opportunity it has proven: only three episodes long and ferreted away on BBC4. Tonight, Brand's nurse Kim has to partake in a jargon-strewn 'conflict resolution strategy' after her bawdy humour hits a sensitive target, Den and Dr Pippa tie themselves in knots over who exactly has won the raffle prize (a hamper), and the stool research continues. Bleak but brilliant.

Getting On with hospital comedy

Who would have thought a sitcom set in an NHS ward could be so tragic, moving and hilarious? We want more.