Only something special could nudge Victoria Wood out of stand-up exile, and this gig in aid of the British Heart Foundation is certainly a very good reason indeed. It may be a decade since she's performed as a stand-up, but you'd never guess, and she's as sharp as ever. For the other ladies on the bill, who include Jo Brand, Julia Davis, Katy Brand,
Isy Suttie, and Roisin Conaty, she's still quite an inspiration.

More remembrances of things past, this time from Jo Brand and Bill Bailey. Brand sets the controls for the heart of 1972 where her teenage self is having a bad time of it. Her family has money worries, they are moving town and she's being bullied at her new school - until she meets her saviour Susan Pigg. Bailey takes a different approach to the other Little Crackers by not setting his story in his childhood. He plays himself, a grouch who doesn't know the meaning of Christmas spirit.

Time to forget all your troubles, kick back, relax and laugh at a show you probably saw back in April. The O2 Arena plays host to literally quite a few comedians in a show put on to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity; so even if the likes of Jack Whitehall, Jason Manford, Michael McIntyre and James Corden aren't funny then at least some good will come from this. There are plenty of good turns here as well from David Mitchell, Jo Brand, Sean Lock and Kevin Eldon.

Running nightly this week are this year's seasonal shorts little crackers from Sky One, which annually tries to make up for the dearth of decent original drama and comedy from January-November by gorging us with a festive selection box featuring some of the best-known names in the business.

This time they've got the likes of Victoria Wood, Catherine Tate, Stephen Fry, Kathy Burke, Julian Barratt, Jo Brand, Bill Bailey - oh, the list goes on, basically anyone who's ever appeared on a panel game is either appearing in, writing or directing one of these 12-minute films, mostly based on autobiographical stories about their childhoods.

And like a selection box, there are a few yucky praline noisette ones. David Baddiel's film is as annoying as he is, though it does feature a good impersonation of Record Breakers star Norris McWhirter by Alastair McGowan, who must have been delighted to get a chance to do an impression he probably last did as a child. Chris O'Dowd has a dull grumpy Santa story and Dawn French oddly casts herself as the late Queen Mother.

But there are some nice strawberry cream ones too: Victoria Wood's is a sweet, nostalgic tale, Julian Barratt's teenaged heavy metallers are quirky and Kathy Burke's memory of meeting Joe Strummer is endearing. Anyway, they're all over so quickly that even the ho-hum ones are watchable enough - shame though that for Sky, decent original programmes come barely more than once a year.

Victoria Wood directs this loosely autobiographical story about a Lancashire girl whose dismal Christmas is transformed upon visiting a merry neighbour. Hers is the first of a dozen bite-sized films written by and starring the cream of British comedy - Stephen Fry, Bill Bailey, Jo Brand - shown in double bills. Next up tonight is Chris O'Dowd's impish tale about the time he ambushed that white-bearded, milk- and mince pie-pinching trickster in red. Nine-year-old Chris is as lippy a rapscallion as you might expect, while O'Dowd takes the role of disgruntled supermarket Santa and Sharon Horgan is terrific as harassed Mum.

A nightly season of short autobiographical films featuring some of Britain's best comic talent opens tonight with stories by Victoria Wood and Chris O'Dowd. Dawn French, Stephen Fry, Bill Bailey, Kathy Burke, Jo Brand and Catherine Tate are among those writing, narrating and starring in these seasonal dramatisations of their lives, often with stories recalled from their childhood. It's a bit hit-and-miss. Wood's is on first, though hers is the only story not to feature a younger version of herself. The IT Crowd's O'Dowd follows with an amusing story of why as a boy he thought Santa was a "big weirdo".

Getting On: my triumvirate of heroines

Jo Brand, Vicki Pepperdine and Jo Scanlan have gifted us a TV classic with their touchingly comic window on the NHS.

Victoria Wood to host Sky1 comedy night

Victoria Wood is to host a night of comedy from performers including Jo Brand at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, with the event being broadcast on Sky1.

It may have escaped your notice, but the current series of one of 2010's best comedies quietly came to an end last night. Set in a careworn NHS geriatric ward, Getting On has drawn critical acclaim, but negligible viewing figures.

While I appreciate that a rawly naturalistic tragicomedy suffused with the stench of sickness and mortality will never be a ratings blockbuster, it would be nice to see more love for this overlooked gem.

Written by and starring Joanna Scanlan, Vicki Pepperdine and former psychiatric nurse Jo Brand, Getting On is the antithesis of your average mainstream medical confection: a defiantly unglamorous depiction of Britain's healthcare system, staffed not by selfless angels, but by flawed human beings muddling through as best they can under thankless circumstances. Skating deftly on a hairpin between comedy and pathos, it depicts a profession in which the abiding concerns are bureaucracy, people management and death.

This was never more strikingly illustrated than in the scenes in which the elderly Scottish woman who had been slowly dying throughout the series, finally, inevitably expired. Her poor daughter, unable to accept what had happened, tearfully and tetchily instructed her to wake up, as if it was all just a sick joke: a heartbreaking sketch of grief, emblematic of the programme's understatement.

Sister Den (Scanlan) and Nurse Kim (Brand) went through the practiced motions of comforting the bereaved and dealing with the deceased. But they also argued over what to do with the dead woman's untouched lunch.

Keen to vacate another much-needed bed, Den told the bewildered daughter that the body had to be moved immediately. She was bundled from the hospital to deal with her pain elsewhere, while her mother was abruptly wheeled away in full view of the other patients. As a blunt, desperately sad illustration of Getting On's core themes of life's cyclical grind and the pragmatic demands of NHS medical care, it couldn't have been bettered.

Director Peter Capaldi - Scanlan's co-star from The Thick of It, of which this is a spiritual relative - is to be commended for his sensitive handling of this material. His appropriately sickly, washed-out colour palette and the authentic performances from his excellent cast combine to create a bleakly enthralling atmosphere unlike any other British sitcom.

Doesn't sound like a laugh riot? Well no, it isn't, but nor is it trying to be. The humour arises naturally from character, the situations rooted in reality. Getting On is poignant, funny, profound even. Here's hoping for a speedy return.

"Fly on the wall" possibly isn't the most hygienic way to describe a hospital comedy, but this second series for Jo Brand's ward-based series has been all about the slightly grubby details. Successful as a nurse? Then you're likely to be a failure as a human being. Good with people? You'll never prosper. It's a potentially pretty bleak prospect, it's true, but, directed with lightness by Peter Capaldi, the show creates a real empathy for and between its characters. Tonight, Dr Pippa receives some disappointing news and Beattie's stay in London comes to an end.