Sally4Ever: Julia Davis and Mark Gatiss on their provocative new comedy series

The stars of Sky Atlantic's new series discuss pushing comedic boundaries and the joys of playing horrible people

Julia Davis and Catherine Shepherd in 'Sally4Ever' (Sky Atlantic)

Julia Davis is standing outside West London Studios in a hospital gown, clutching a cup of tea. Her face is deathly pale, her eyes puffy. As I approach, she gestures at herself with a smile. “I’m not really ill.”

In fact, she’s shooting a scene for Sally4Ever – a new seven-part comedy series in which meek office worker Sally (Catherine Shepherd) dumps her insufferable fiancée David (The Inbetweeners’ Alex Macqueen) after being swept off her feet by Julia Davis’s charismatic, emotionally manipulative Emma. I won’t spoil the reason for the hospital visit – it doesn’t appear until later in the season – but it involves a guest appearance from Mark Gatiss, and if it makes the cut, an improvised tangent about putting wombs in jam jars. Each time they retake the scene (usually because someone has cracked up) it evolves into a weirder, darker space.

“The good thing is knowing that you can play with the script,” says Gatiss later over lunch. “There’s no one there going, ‘Actually, it’s ‘at’ not ‘it’. It’s incredibly liberating, because you’re not sweating the small details; you’re just having fun, and then it kind of infects the whole thing. It makes it much more dangerous.”

It’s dangerous, and liberating because there are so few limits to Davis’s comedy – which mixes absurdism with jet-black humour. Think of her role in BBC2’s Nighty Night, as the narcissistic sociopath Jill, who exclaims, ‘Why me?!’ when her husband is diagnosed with cancer, before promptly heading off to a dating agency; or in Hunderby, a historical farce packed with incest, adultery and forest-based hand jobs. Davis created and wrote these shows too, earning her a cult following.

Davis as narcissistic sociopath Jill in hit series ‘Nighty Night’ (Baby Cow Productions)

When she finds people who share her comic sensibility – like Vicki Pepperdine, with whom she hosts the mordant, mock agony-aunt podcast Dear Joan and Jericha, and who plays the couple’s self-serving therapist in Sally4Ever – she tends to keep them around. “I would not want to work with anyone I didn’t like,” says Davis. “It just gives such a different atmosphere to have friends around – obviously brilliantly talented friends.”

Her partner, fellow comedy actor Julian Barratt, also delves into the macabre in shows such as The Mighty Boosh and Channel 4’s outstanding Flowers, and plays Sally’s enamoured colleague in Sally4Ever – but this is only their second time working together onscreen. The first was a Chekhov comedy short for the BBC “that we didn’t think was very good”, says Davis. “It was like, ‘Oh dear, is that all we’re gonna do together?’ So we’re hoping this is a bit better.”

It is. The first two episodes certainly stay true to Davis’s provocative sense of humour – complete with two deaths, several comically lurid sexual escapades (one involving a bloody tampon being removed and thrown onto a white wedding dress), and a scene in which Emma invents both a friend and a car accident to get Sally’s attention. “Anna? I haven’t heard you mention her,” says Sally. “Oh God sorry,” snips Emma. “So it doesn’t matter that she’s been squashed into a giant red stripe across the road by a f***ing bendy bus.”

Julia Davis with the cast of ‘Hunderby‘ (Baby Cow Productions)

“She’s a slightly vacuous, opportunistic woman,” says Davis, “who wants to be an actress and a musician and lots of different things. She sort of infiltrates Sally’s life.” That’s something of an understatement. Days into their relationship, Emma gets a key cut to Sally’s home and then redecorates. She drapes pink fabric over the walls, hangs up a nude photo of herself mooning a teddy bear, and takes a sharp compass to Sally’s dead grandma’s coffee table. “Shabby chic,” she says, proudly. “I love it,” lies Sally, barely choking back tears.

“It’s fun to play horrible people,” laughs Davis, “and to sort of channel my annoyance at people who are like that.” She knows that when it comes to the darkness in comedy, “there is such a thing as too far, definitely, but I just go on what I think is funny. That’s it really. It’s an instinctive thing. There are definitely times where you say something and you just think, ‘Oh God actually that’s horrible,’ but it’s better to explore it and have a go.”

There’s a difference, I suggest, between pushing the boundaries, and being offensive for the sake of it. “Yeah, totally,” she agrees. “I definitely would never have any interest in that.” Still, she adds, “I’m sure it’ll offend some people. Because I think all comedy offends some people.”

But Vicki Pepperdine thinks there’s a double standard at play. “I was reading about [the backlash to] Amy Schumer’s film, I Feel Pretty,” she says, “and it’s as though some women are being asked to carry the whole moral compass. It seems that now, women are being required to tick every single box, and carry all the difficult bits of the world in their work. We’re drilling into women more: ‘Why are you doing that? Why aren’t you doing this?’ And actually we’re not really doing that to men.”

Gatiss agrees. “I was reading a thing the other day saying, ‘Is there a way back for Weinstein? Surely it’s time to forgive him.’ That is not extended to women.”

Still, neither Davis, nor the rest of the cast, is going to apologise for the show’s outrageous moments. “What makes something funny,” says Shepherd, “is going into the mess. Life is messy, and it’s on the edge, but what’s uncomfortable and confusing is often funny. I think playing with that is really refreshing. Nobody really knows what they’re doing most of the time.”

Sally4Ever airs on Thursday 25 October on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV at 10pm