This week's best live comedy

Previews of John Kearns, Holly Walsh and Boothby Graffoe.

Comedy review: Holly Walsh, Edinburgh

"How do I follow that?" enquired Holly Walsh of the preceding audience-participation act, which involved a spoof Latino star and over-elaborate fake penises. Perhaps the wisest response would be not to try and engage with the front-row drunk who had already plagued each act on this Thursday Show bill.

Holly Walsh interview

The scribe of BBC Three's Dead Boss has a talent for mining material from personal injury.

Radio Times review

Radio Times makes a cameo in the first of the stories here. It's a cautionary tale, Richmond Hammond informs us - attempting an ominous smile. It's also a silly one: a postman becomes the perfect boyfriend by reading someone's mail.

Second in the storytelling chair is comic actress Jessica Hynes, who is much better at sinister. Written by Holly Walsh, it's about a woman who wakes up hung-over to find her eight-year-old self staring at her from the foot of the bed. This one is more satisfying, although is more likely to give you nightmares than fits of giggles.

Interview: Dead Boss co-creator Holly Walsh

BBC3's Dead Boss sees Holly Walsh move behind the camera on a show she co-writes with Sharon Horgan. Keen to find out more about the show, Giggle Beats caught up with an exhausted Holly Walsh to find out if everything had gone according to plan...

I'll reserve judgement on Dead Boss, Sharon Horgan and Holly Walsh's comedy about a woman wrongly convicted of murder. First episodes are often awkward affairs, and this one didn't break the rule. But I liked the dodgy solicitor who offered a "no win, some fee" service and there was a nice moment when Horgan's character found her cocky insults about a prison tough and her cronies being repeated to them by a guilelessly supportive cell-mate. "I have been completely taken out of context," she stammers, raising the question of exactly what context would take the sting out of "mentally stunted trolls". Give it time.

Dead Boss creators 'begged' Jennifer Saunders for role

Dead Boss creators Sharon Horgan and Holly Walsh have admitted that they became "obsessed" with Jennifer Saunders after she agreed to appear in their new BBC Three comedy.

Dead Boss is a dead brilliant new sitcom

It apparently took Sharon Horgan and Holly Walsh several years to bring Dead Boss to screen and it seems it was certainly worth the wait as all in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the first episode. But the fun didn't stop there... oh no...

Holly Walsh interview

Holly Walsh talks about her new sitcom starring Jennifer Saunders, Sharon Horgan's amazing garden shed and how she turned a nasty accident to her advantage.

The disappointment of the week had to be Dead Boss, BBC3's six-part comedy thriller with murder-mystery overtones starring Sharon Horgan, who co-wrote the show with Holly Walsh.

Horgan plays Helen, wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment within the forbidding walls of Broadmarsh Prison. And broad is the operative word here. The producers have clearly gone for big laughs - a laudable ambition - but the route they've taken is obvious and predictable. The quality of the jokes is erratic, to say the least, while the talented cast wastes its energies on stale stereotypes.

Horgan, the most deliciously subtle of performers, is left frantically mugging away for laughs, which is something of a crime in itself.