Catastrophe, episode 3, review: Nobody could call this sitcom predictable

This often-shocking sitcom has a modish wisdom that speaks to the nation’s thirty-somethings

Usually, Catastrophe is memorable for its M-16 style fusillades of killer one-liners, witty takes on the many absurdities of modern middle-class life and deep, rich, ironic observational humour. Midway into the final series, Sharon (Sharon Horgan) and Rob (Rob Delaney) are shooting their well-turned dialogue into our ears (maybe it helps that they also write it), with just the right sardonic ricochets to prevent them and the small universe of characters orbiting around them from falling the wrong side of political correctness. Plenty of sex too. As I’ve remarked before, Catastrophe is like a modernised Terry and June, very funny in an arid sort of way, and likes to shock.

However, nothing really prepares the viewer for the kinkiness newly separated Fran (Ashley Jensen) and her on-off lover boy Douglas (Douglas Hodge) now indulge in. There she was, in the street, in broad daylight, pinned up against the wall by Douglas in a particularly frenetic knee-trembler, to use a rather quaint term for their risky al fresco wordless shag. It lasts for just a few seconds, I suppose, and Fran emerges from it with most of her dignity intact, but I just can’t get this image of the upper reaches of Fran’s thighs out of my poor, tortured mind. It’s not erotic; just difficult to believe it was broadcast.

Nor, to be even-handed about things, is her description of Douglas’s genitalia any less remarkable, when she tells Sharon he is so handsome that “even his scrotum is attractive”. I mean, I don’t know what goes on in the minds of Horgan and Delaney, or anywhere else, but I have nothing but admiration for their imagination.

So, the formula may be a reliable one, but no one could call Catastrophe predictable. I rather hope that this brief adventure into raw sex will at least stop Jensen from getting typecast.

As Sharon and Rob jog towards the end of the series, and, possibly their relationship (who knows?) there are growing intimations of mortality. Sharon’s GP tells her – it comes to us all – that her cholesterol levels are a little high, and she has “high levels of fat” surrounding her organs. Nor can he do anything about her persistent postnatal incontinence – “we’re closer to curing cancer than figuring out how mothers not pee when they don’t want to”. Kitted out in Lycra, Sharon turns up for “military fitness” sessions on the park which she finds humiliating, enjoyably for us. Meanwhile, Rob is sprayed in the face by youths on a scooter – though it turns out just to be orange juice. He’s out there, yelling what sounds like “Hasidic Jews” (in fact “acidic juice”) at his prank assailants, a small vignette of the everyday paranoia about random attacks with oven cleaner or bleach that haunts people living in our capital.

As ever, though, the best of Catastrophe takes place in quiet and thoughtful conversations. After her doc dropped the cholesterol bombshell, Sharon reflects aloud on her father dying when he was 70: “That’s nothing these days – like dying in your forties. My parents had me in their thirties, I had my dad all my adult life, and he knew his grandkids, sort of. If I die in my seventies my kids will barely be thirty. They won’t have had kids. No way. Not millennials. They don’t give a s*** about anyone… I just want a decent while.”

That’s one reason why Catastrophe enjoys the popularity it does – because it echoes something back to a certain demographic, the coming class that will, whether they like it or not, be running what’s left of this poor old country in a decade or two. Doing intergenerational fairness in a sitcom is a brave enterprise, and, as you see, they succeed.

Catastrophe’s modish wisdom “speaks to” the nation’s thirty-somethings, if I can use that ugly terminology. Many will recognise the brutal truth of their shared predicament. For example, here are Rob and Sharon at a lunch party with some new parent friends: “Having kids is like strapping yourself to a Formula 1 race car, you know? Boom! Your life is over, but not in a bad way...” Sharon, almost, finishes the thought: “Yeah. You just have to take everything you ever wanted and put it in a box because you never... But, yeah, it’s great, you know.”

Maybe, despite the cholesterol and the alcohol intake, Sharon and Rob will live long enough to return one day, with or without their grandchildren, and entertain us before frailty finally overtakes them.