Last night's TV: Catastrophe (Channel 4); 1066: A Year to Conquer England (BBC2)

A coupling of comedy and sex can produce attractive results

Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan return for the third series of the brilliantly uncomfortable ‘Catastrophe’ (Channel 4)

It's difficult to categorise Channel 4’s Catastrophe, returning for its third run. Sharon Horgan once again takes on the role of ballsy Irishwoman Sharon Morris and Rob Delaney wearily goes about the business of trying to summon energy from weary Yank character Rob Norris. They’re a couple who, in effect, foisted what you might term a “shotgun partnership” upon themselves after an unplanned pregnancy. How to describe Catastrophe for you, beyond that?

First, the noun. “Comedy” comes closest, and it is, mostly, funny. But it’s also sometimes a painful watch, exploring as it does themes of infidelity and marital deception, if not cruelty. This goes some distance beyond the usual bittersweet comedy of embarrassment that we relish so much, as executed with such skill and exquisite timing in Fawlty Towers or The Office. There probably isn’t a word in the English language for it. Comedy will have to do, then.

That’s the noun. What of the adjective? There’s an awful lot of shagging, so “sex comedy” might be apt. Then again, it’s nothing like those so-bad-they’re-bad soft porn “sex comedies” we endured in seedy cinemas in the 1970s, the low, low point of the British film industry and the careers of otherwise distinguished acting talent such as Denholm Elliott. He deserves to be remembered for more than Percy (1971), you know.

I digress, but there really is an awful lot of sex in Catastrophe. Just so you know. “Feminist comedy” might be more apt, as the casual drunken sex plus frank discussion of the intimate details to mates in bars (where remembered) is carried out by the female dramatis personae, not the fellas. Then again, the lead female is hardly liberated by her experimentation. Maybe “relationship comedy” fits best. “Contemporary relationship comedy” is even better, provided that “contemporary” relationships involve such quantities of great sex that they are incompatible with modern working patterns. Not sure about that in any sense.

Like the best comedies (or whatever this is), not a lot happens, just the act, suppression and confession of (another) unwise act of adultery. By Sharon. Her lies pile on lies until they become a tottering unsustainable erection, which, as it happens, was the root of all her problems. The action, apart from the sex and the heavy boozing, is all verbal, with world-class wisecracks and wordplay, and maybe it works so well because it’s Horgan and Delaney who have done the writing. In some ways it has a very American feel, with a nicely ironic turn, and few writers can have eked as many laughs from a receipt for a morning after pill as this catastrophic pair. It’s domestic, slow-paced and occasionally upsetting TV, and, whatever you might choose to call it, entertaining.

The dramatisation somehow makes the history less vivid in ‘1066: A Year to Conquer England’ (BBC)

The BBC’s 1066: A Year to Conquer England proves, yet again, that, like drink and drugs and sex, historical documentaries are best not mixed with dramatisation, as you usually end up with an awfully bad hangover and a great deal of regret (if not an actual unwanted pregnancy).

Dan Snow does his usually professional and engaging job of bringing the familiar stories of Harold, Harald Hadrada and William of Normandy vividly to life. But the acting? Oh, dear, oh dear. Straight from the BBC Historical Documentaries agency and equipped only with some absurdly stilted dialogue, this small army of extras somehow made the historical events less vivid. Even allowing for the fact that there’s very little archive footage available from the 11th century, and that the eye-witnesses have long since departed, I think they could have done better: An arrow in the eye for the producers, and all that.