Nighty Night truly is an example of black comedy of the very darkest kind. It's a comedy show full of decidedly savage humour that is pretty far removed from treading around the niceties of politically correctness. It features one of the most deliciously amoral central characters ever created for TV in hair stylist Jill Tyrell. She is an astronomically self-absorbed and manipulative sociopath who will stop at nothing to get her own way. She pretends her husband has died of cancer so she can date other men and do other things. She targets new neighbour Don as a future partner and treats his wheelchair-bound wife Cath, who is suffering from MS, atrociously with a mixture of passive-aggressiveness and outright cruelty. Jill is played to perfection by Julia Davis who also wrote the series. Davis achieves the somewhat rare feat of using her sexuality to elicit many of the laughs – which is not something that you see very often for some reason. Despite her characters monumental obnoxiousness this is a somewhat sexy yet hilarious performance. The writing is very good and the talented cast all put in excellent turns. Angus Deayton plays the under-stated Don, Rebecca Front is great as the put-upon ultra-nice Cath, Kevin Eldon is once again very strange as Jill's unfortunate husband, while Mark Gatiss is indescribable as the disturbingly odd Ken Dodd lookalike Glen Bulb. The series is unusual in that some characters are played naturalistically while others are patently absurd.
There were two seasons in this series and it would only be fair to say that the first one is clearly the better, although the second is still pretty funny. Season one is far more focused than the more cartoonish season two which went more for gross-out humour a little too often for my liking. The change has probably got a lot to do with the fact that Julia Davis spent three years working on the first season and considerably less time putting together the second one due to the BBC commissioning another six episodes. Season one is a suburban comedy with a more recognisably realistic set of circumstances and characters, while season two goes hell for leather into increasingly more absurd territory set around a health farm.
But irrespective of comparisons between the two seasons, this is still excellent stuff. I really wish Julia Davis had been given the reigns to devise more TV comedy on the strength of this quite fearless and inappropriately hilarious series. Despite being definitely an ensemble piece, this is ultimately Davis' vehicle given her inspired central character and the fact she wrote it all herself. In addition, I also was somewhat amused by the use of some decidedly unfashionable 80's tunes from the likes of Marillion and Heart and as for the scene where Jill takes Cath on an unwanted trip up the high street sound-tracked by the metal anthem 'Rock You lie a Hurricane' by the German poodle rockers The Scorpions - too funny!
There were two seasons in this series and it would only be fair to say that the first one is clearly the better, although the second is still pretty funny. Season one is far more focused than the more cartoonish season two which went more for gross-out humour a little too often for my liking. The change has probably got a lot to do with the fact that Julia Davis spent three years working on the first season and considerably less time putting together the second one due to the BBC commissioning another six episodes. Season one is a suburban comedy with a more recognisably realistic set of circumstances and characters, while season two goes hell for leather into increasingly more absurd territory set around a health farm.
But irrespective of comparisons between the two seasons, this is still excellent stuff. I really wish Julia Davis had been given the reigns to devise more TV comedy on the strength of this quite fearless and inappropriately hilarious series. Despite being definitely an ensemble piece, this is ultimately Davis' vehicle given her inspired central character and the fact she wrote it all herself. In addition, I also was somewhat amused by the use of some decidedly unfashionable 80's tunes from the likes of Marillion and Heart and as for the scene where Jill takes Cath on an unwanted trip up the high street sound-tracked by the metal anthem 'Rock You lie a Hurricane' by the German poodle rockers The Scorpions - too funny!