One of the best jokes in Catastrophe (Channel 4, Tuesday, 9pm), a comedy that, for many of us, has quickly become a manual in living, is a simple matter of continuity.
Every time Sharon phones Rob – even after marriage, two children, several jobs, the break-up of their friends, an alcoholic relapse and family bereavements – her number always comes up as “Sharon London Sex”. Some things never change.
How a one-night stand, or three, might blossom into "wife, children, house, everything – the full catastrophe", as Zorba the Greek put it, has always been the running joke of Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney's superbly funny series, a programme that makes perpetual disappointments seem comically divine.
If anything, Sharon and Rob's relationship is the most functional relationship on television. You wish you fought with your partner with the wit that they do
As lacerating as it is reassuring, Sharon and Rob’s relationship is far from dysfunctional. If anything it’s the most functional relationship on television. You wish you fought with your partner with the wit that they do.
Sure, as the fourth series begins, after a knot-in-the-stomach cliffhanger, things don’t look great. Rob stands trial for drink-driving, pleading for leniency because his wife had recently “masturbated a young student, a college boy, on the roof of a nightclub”. “A criminal in a neck brace,” Sharon retorts afterwards. “What a f***ing catch.”
That Rob is again sober and ordered to assist in a charity shop, while Sharon unhappily minds the kids and dabbles discreetly in shoplifting, may seem like an anticlimax. But Catastrophe doesn't really do calamity. Rob, itching with guilt, becomes the biddable jobsmith of a woman injured by his accident. Sharon, caught stealing, expediently uses Rob's alcoholism as an excuse. "My children don't have a father," she weeps, then adds, "this weekend." Life still goes on.
What does it say, though, that soon Catastrophe will not? All good things come to an end, and the great syncopated music of Sharon and Rob's codependency (you hesitate to call it harmony) is no exception. Pessimism might be the programme's other show runner, which is why it may be wise to expect an absolute disaster.
But Sharon and Rob might stay together for the acid repartee alone. Besides, like any true Londoners, this Irish woman and American man are more likely to endure whatever comes next, to keep calm, carry on, make a joke.
By the end of the first episode, both have sustained physical injuries, real lacerations to accompany their wounded egos, but they are again talking sincerely. Or reasonably sincerely. “That’s a garden-variety cry for help,” Rob says of Sharon’s misdemeanour, partly in reassurance, partly in roast.
Soon even Sharon London Sex is initiated, so long as she does not have to look at this criminal in a neck brace. Perhaps not all is forgiven in Catastrophe. But what's the worst that can happen?
