Sick but just so funny

Dame Edna Everage once remarked that, "God has given me a precious gift - the ability to laugh at the misfortunes of others", but in reality, joking about other people's physical hardships is always fraught with danger.

The "cripple" gags that echoed around the playing fields of my youth were invariably more cruel than amusing ("What are the first and last lessons at a spastics school?" "Assembly and Breaking Up" comes to mind), and Mariah Carey's fans were so shocked a few years ago when she allegedly remarked (about starving Third World children) "I'd love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff", that the pop diva was forced to issue a furious denial.

It's safer by far to joke about one's own infirmities, like Douglas Bader referring to himself as "a living legend", or Ian Dury dubbing himself "Spasticus" ("I wibble when I piddle 'cos my middle is a riddle"). Or a schizophrenic friend of mine, who once told me that there are only two advantages to having multiple personalities: "My therapist gives me a group discount, and masturbation becomes an orgy."

The relentless and utterly callous mockery of the mentally, physically and terminally ill that permeates BBC2's Nighty Night ought, therefore, to render it unwatchable, and thoroughly dislikeable, too. Yet Julia Davis's bleak black-comedy drama is so bravely and inventively misanthropic that I found myself laughing more last night than I have done in years (not since the time that Jeremy Beadle vainly tried to sue me for writing that he played practical jokes on people with his withered hand, forgetting that he'd already admitted to this on radio years before).

Few comedies would dare to start with a scene in which married couple Jill and Terry (Davis and Kevin Eldon) are given the news "it's cancer", followed by the sobbing wife asking: "Why has this happened to me?" And well might she ask, because the pay-off to this opening scene revealed that the type of cancer Jill had contracted was ... cancer of the husband.

While Terry lay in a hospital bed, apparently nearing his expiration date, Jill was more preoccupied with her sexpiration date. Without waiting for him to shuffle off his mortal coil, she began advertising herself as "a widow with a lust for life and a flexible spine", and headed off to the "Lasso the Moon" dating agency (a subliminal reference to It's a Wonderful Life), run by a man so camp he made Dale Winton look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"Would you like someone who's emotionally open and able to communicate?" received the curt response "no thank you", while "what about personality?" was met with "I don't mind if he has one or not", and Jill's appalling indifference to other people's feelings was even more obvious during a cursory visit to her husband's ward. "These jimjams might be a bit small," observed the seemingly healthy Terry as he examined the pyjamas she'd bought him, only for her to reply: "Well, Doctor Wivel says you will be very small towards the end."

The faultlessly superb supporting cast were as gloriously dysfunctional as the leads, ranging from the monstrously self-centred to the most pathetic of doormats. Angus Deayton was well chosen as the philandering Doctor Don, with whom Jill soon became obsessed, while his MSstricken wheelchair-bound wife (Rebecca Front) was so self-abasing that she obligingly offered to fellate him, even though that first required her to put on her neck brace (or her "three vicars", as they're known chez Lewis-Smith).

Equally grotesque was the elderly assistant in Hill's beauty parlour, who was warned to "not breathe too close to the clients while your dentures are settling in, we're not all fish lovers", but most hideous of all was Jill's first date, Glenn (Mark Gatiss), who confessed that his exwife had once been unfaithful to him. "With her orthodontist, but brute force was involved, he was very drunk, technically it was rape

... but he didn't press charges."

Even darker than Monkey Dust, even more inspired than Little Britain, this is the funniest British comedy I've seen in years (including repeats of Fawlty Towers), and indicates that BBC3 (where this series was first shown in January) is now starting to commission some truly important comedy.

A few months ago, an alarum was sounded when BBC2 appeared to be losing some of its A/B viewers, but this series from Steve Coogan and Henry Normal's Baby Cow production company will certainly attract them back, by proving that (at its best) television is first-rate electronic theatre, not second-rate film.

We've long known that Julia Davis is a brilliant actress, but she's clearly a brilliant comedy writer too, excelling in verbal misunderstandings, such as the moment when Jill reprimanded a sweaty employee with the words, "I've had several complaints about BO, Linda", and was told, "I swear to God I've never smelt you".