Flowers

Flowers review

Having previously co-written and co-directed the acclaimed indie film Black Pond, one of Chris Langham's few projects since his downfall, Will Sharpe can rightly stake a claim to be a genuine comedy auteur on the back of this original and compelling work.

Georgina Campbell interview

Georgina Campbell is fretting that Olivia Colman will think she's a stalker. "I'm following her around," she tells me, laughing. She's referring to the actresses' joint-billing in both Channel 4's new comedy Flowers and Broadchurch's third series.

Unknown writer gets his big TV break with Flowers

Will Sharpe was born in London but until the age of eight he lived in Tokyo. He was educated at Winchester College, then went to Cambridge, where he read classics and joined the university's dramatic club, Footlights, subsequently spending a year with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

TV preview: Flowers, C4

This is not your conventional sitcom then, but nor is it anything like Camping or The Mighty Boosh. It's sitcomland but tipped off its axis in a different direction. There are moments which will make you laugh - particularly the house party from hell in the first episode - but this is a series that stretches the genre to snapping point.

Julian Barratt interview

The Mighty Boosh star is back in Flowers, a sitcom about a dysfunctional family. He talks about fatherhood and why he's too grumpy for panel shows.

Julian Barratt interview

Julian Barratt is disarmingly honest about his affinity with Maurice.

13 things to expect from Channel 4's Flowers

We've rounded up 13 things you can expect from this eccentric, melancholic family drama that Channel 4 claims goes'from the magical to the mundane to the downright mad'.

Flowers preview

Flowers won't be everyone's cup of tea. Some simply won't laugh. Some will find it too weird. Others will find it too dark and at times uncomfortable. And if you're like me, you'll feel a mixture of all of those things.

Coming soon to Channel 4 (25 April, same day as Game of Thrones - squeeeee) is the very peculiar Flowers. I'm strangely drawn to it, even though I'm not 100 per cent sure I like it yet.

Julian Barratt of The Mighty Boosh and Olivia Colman of everything else star as unhappily married couple Maurice and Deborah Flowers. They live in a tumbledown house in the country with their dysfunctional grown-up children and a young Japanese illustrator called Shun (played by the show's writer, Will Sharpe), who draws the pictures for Maurice's children's books.

It feels a bit out of time, a touch Royal Tenenbaums-y, and it's hard to sense the tone from episode one. But Barratt is all charisma with a churning internal maelstrom and Colman is typically brilliant at Deborah's vulnerability and quiet fury. Plus she gets to wear some pretty fantastic capes. All in all, I'm on board, if a bit confounded. I want to see more.

Flowers review

Wilfully oddball comedy-drama that blooms into something curiously beautiful.