That poor Edinburgh lady who gets treated shoddily every time she visits her ailing mum is again ridden roughshod over, thanks to hospital bureaucracy. Ricky Grover as controlled menace Matron Hilary gets some great scenes, precipitated by an infection control drive and a swooning Den. Plus a goody two-shoes student nurse irritates Kim.

The wobbly camerawork, as if shot by a team of four-year-olds who have run off with the digicam; the mournfully drab municipal setting; the absence, God forbid, of a laugh track; the studiedly natural dialogue. The Office begat The Thick Of It which begat this, a downbeat comedy set on an anonymous NHS ward. It came as no surprise that this, the first episode of the second series (I've come to it late), was directed by Peter Capaldi and starred Joanna Scanlan - each a first-class honours graduate of the Armando Iannucci school of comedy.

And this, being the series opener, it was appropriate that this most self-effacing of entertainments kept the action to the bare minimum. An unconscious old homeless person was admitted whom neither Nurse Den Flixter (Joanna Scanlan) nor her underling Kim Wilde (Jo Brand) really wanted to deal with. A little later, a woman visited her ailing mother and challenges Dr Pippa Moore (Vicki Pepperdine) about the level of pain relief available. That was it. The comedy, such as it was, peeped out from the fraught exchanges between Den, Dr Moore and the male Matron Hilary (Ricky Grover) as they tussled for the upper hand among the dank beds and grey windows. Kim meanwhile rolled her eyes and tried to keep out of trouble.

Yet, days later, it's not the comedy that stays with you, but the show's portrait of the NHS in miniature. Brand, Pepperdine and Scanlan are co-writers, and one assumes Brand's early career as a psychiatric nurse keeps the tone right, if not the up-to-the-minute detail. The passage of the homeless woman from Kim and Den, to the reluctant care of a junior house officer, to the corridor as they try to offload her on another ward was as understandable as it was distressing. Similarly, a well-informed woman's request that her mother's meds be amped up wasn't so much wryly amusing as it was useful - so that, you thought, is how you get someone to pay you proper attention: bone up on the internet, be endlessly polite and don't let them off the hook.

Getting On is notable for its delicacy. Set in a geriatric ward, it's astonishingly bleak for a comedy and comes shot in wintry shades of blue and grey. However, it never revels in its grimness, but rather uses the proximity of disease and death as a wall to bounce its humour off.

Everything about it feels carefully - and perfectly - judged: the ghastly patronising doctor (Vicki Pepperdine) telling one of her juniors to 'have a root around' in the prostate form of a very smelly tramp, the ward sister (Joanna Scanlan) bossily refusing to admit the sister of a patient outside visiting hours, and then almost swooning in the presence of the lavishly camp male nurse, Hilary (Ricky Grover). Here is human nature - in its frailties, its contradictions and its efforts to keep desperation at bay.

This is followed by Jo Brand's superb new comedy, Getting On. Set in the geriatric ward of an NHS hospital, it is centred around four brilliantly observed members of staff - a nurse newly returned to the NHS (Jo Brand), a subtly insane nursing sister (Joanna Scanlan), a male matron (Ricky Grover) and a brittle doctor (Vicki Pepperdine). Directed by Peter Capaldi, it is filmed in the verité style of The Office and The Thick of It using shaky cameras and dialogue that sounds overheard rather than scripted. It was the wonderful surprise of the week.