Review: Channel 4's Year of the Rabbit is silly & smart

Essentially The Sweeney in Victorian times (in fact the show's original working title was Ye Sweeney), Year of the Rabbit proves to be a winning mix of smart but silly gags with a first-rate cast.

Flowers, which ran through the week on Channel 4, was a true hen's teeth rarity: we were witnessing, I think, the invention of a new genre. I'm just not sure quite what it was. Thorny, yes, prickly and awkward. Bleakly black too. Resoundingly human and truly funny. Above all, the singular vision of show runner (and writer and director and co-star) Will Sharpe, an Anglo-Japanese former Footlights president. What I do know is that I could have watched it all year long.

There were elements of Roald Dahl and Japanese anime, of Black Mirror and of Alan Ayckbourn, of fairytales for children who drink. Essentially the tale of a depressed writer and his savagely dysfunctional family, as the week wore on it became more forgiving. It's a sign of good drama when there's strength in depth of casting, and there were relishably chunky cameos for Angus Wright and Anna Chancellor as the true grotesques of the piece. But the family itself, the Flowers, survived near fatalities and worse to emerge, if not triumphant, then hugely and recognisably normal.

Olivia Colman, now forgiven the occasional misstep in The Night Manager, was back to all her charm and glory. We have grown used to seeing Colman in full-teeth mode, but she'd obviously been hiding a seventh set: no one else can hiss the accusatory "blabbermouth" while still blinding the world with a smile so wide nor so full of brittle self-doubt. Then there was Daniel Rigby as the son who bores everything but the pants off women, and Sophia Di Martino as sis Amy, the tender fulcrum around which much revolves. Above all, Julian Barratt as father Maurice, who conjures worlds of depression from just a pocketful of mumbles. The sadly salient point came on Thursday, when Deborah (Colman) attempted to reach the heart of Maurice's depression: we can fight it, she says, fight the monster together, maybe just with love. A shaggy shake of a sorrowful head. "No. Love just makes it worse." Truthfully, a week-long gem.

Unknown writer gets his big TV break with Flowers

Will Sharpe was born in London but until the age of eight he lived in Tokyo. He was educated at Winchester College, then went to Cambridge, where he read classics and joined the university's dramatic club, Footlights, subsequently spending a year with the Royal Shakespeare Company.