Olivia Colman and Julian Barratt together to fall apart

This melancholic new comedy features a married couple at odds and jokes as twisted as the staircases. We meet the stars and wunderkind creator.

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.

TV preview: Flowers, C4

This is not your conventional sitcom then, but nor is it anything like Camping or The Mighty Boosh. It's sitcomland but tipped off its axis in a different direction. There are moments which will make you laugh - particularly the house party from hell in the first episode - but this is a series that stretches the genre to snapping point.

Julian Barratt interview

The Mighty Boosh star is back in Flowers, a sitcom about a dysfunctional family. He talks about fatherhood and why he's too grumpy for panel shows.

Julian Barratt interview

Julian Barratt is disarmingly honest about his affinity with Maurice.

Coming soon to Channel 4 (25 April, same day as Game of Thrones - squeeeee) is the very peculiar Flowers. I'm strangely drawn to it, even though I'm not 100 per cent sure I like it yet.

Julian Barratt of The Mighty Boosh and Olivia Colman of everything else star as unhappily married couple Maurice and Deborah Flowers. They live in a tumbledown house in the country with their dysfunctional grown-up children and a young Japanese illustrator called Shun (played by the show's writer, Will Sharpe), who draws the pictures for Maurice's children's books.

It feels a bit out of time, a touch Royal Tenenbaums-y, and it's hard to sense the tone from episode one. But Barratt is all charisma with a churning internal maelstrom and Colman is typically brilliant at Deborah's vulnerability and quiet fury. Plus she gets to wear some pretty fantastic capes. All in all, I'm on board, if a bit confounded. I want to see more.

Everything you need to know about Flowers

Today Channel 4 announced details of their new dark new sitcom Flowers that partners Broadchurch's Olivia Colman and The Mighty Boosh's Julian Barratt.

The Mighty Boosh: celebrating BBC Three originals

BBC Three put Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding's wilfully shambolic live act and radio series, The Mighty Boosh, on TV.

Noel Fielding writing with Julian Barratt again

While Noel Fielding may not have confirmed the Boosh are back, he's hinted that he is working with Julian Barratt once more, telling The Nerdist (via NME) they are writing together again.