Bruce Dessau's top TV comedy for 2016

It's been a bad year in all sorts of ways, but not in terms of TV comedy. I sat down today to come up with a top ten of the year and had difficulty narrowing it down to ten. Of course there were disappointments and programmes that didn't quite live up to expectations, such as Sky's Andrew Lawrence documentary, but there was still plenty to laugh at here. And if you are quick some of them are still available on various catch-up services. And in case you are wondering, I decided not to include Black Mirror - it was brilliant but just too painfully real to be funny.

BBC Sitcom Season: review of the pilots

Some of comedy's hottest names have been busy working on new sitcom pilots for BBC iPlayer, airing in September, with the hope of these creative projects later being picked up for a television series.

Undoubted comedy of the week was Motherland, a terribly truthful exposition of what it means to battle between being the "good" mother - a flawlessly moneyed, pretty, organised and quietly angry Lucy Punch - and the hopeless, exemplified here by Diane Morgan, who lives off frozen food, only gives a forlorn what-the-bugger-now sigh when she severs her finger, and is quietly happy.

Caught in the middle, as I suspect an entire 90% of British mothers are and always have been, is the phenomenal Anna Maxwell Martin as Julia, who makes the one mistake - one! - of lying, once. When asked, by the impossibly kind school to which she ferries with difficulties her two children, whether she had forgotten it was half-term, she opts for a proudly cheerful "No. No?" and so mires herself in a day of tense phone calls, criminal driving, accidental and deliberate snobbery, blood, wine and insane hunger while trying to hold down a job in event management. She's due later in her hellish week to have Peter Mandelson introduce the Women in Construction awards, which deserves an award of its own. As does the terse "I don't have to come to the office for a whole day to watch Elaine print out a press release."

"What time is it now?" she begs Liz (Morgan) as they struggle with their many kids, with prayers for it to be about 4.30pm, or if possible midnight. "Just after midday." "Fucking HELL." It's written by, among others, Sharon Horgan and Graham Linehan, features the most fascinating annoying dad yet written, and is a sure triumph.

I loved Motherland, a pilot sitcom about the maddening stresses of being a working mother. Julia (played by Anna Maxwell-Martin) is trying to get her brats to school, but everyone seems to be working against her: the smooth and blonde yummy mummies at the coffee shop who don't need to work; her exhausted mother who refuses any more babysitting, and her patronising husband who leaves it all to her so he can spend more time choosing pastries in Costa.

The comedy lies in her not being a suffering, saintly mother but in her being bloody fed up with it all, and not being afraid to show her frustration. Her annoying children aren't even granted names. They're just irritants and obstacles in prim little school uniforms.

Motherland review

Sharon Horgan and Graham Linehan's slapstick sitcom shows the fullblown apocalypse of child-rearing.

Motherland, BBC Two, review

Promising pilot of comedy about middle-class parenting.

Essentially Mumsnet: the sitcom, an utterly hysterical and bracingly honest look at the messy business of motherhood. Diane ("Cunk") Morgan, Lucy Punch and Anna Maxwell Martin are by turns chaotic, uber-competitive and Not Coping Very Well ("I really want the children to be brought up like I was - by my mother") in this delicious one-off from the combined writing talents of Graham and Helen Linehan, Sharon Horgan and Holly Walsh. Fingers crossed for a series.

King & queen of comedy: Sharon Horgan & Graham Linehan

If they were musicians, they'd be forming a London Irish supergroup. Sharon Horgan is co-creator and star of the savvy, groundbreaking comedies Pulling and Catastrophe. Graham Linehan is the grandmaster of surreal farce, most of all in Father Ted and The IT Crowd. Together they have merged their talents in Motherland, a new comedy pilot directed by Linehan about the horrors of daytime parenting.

Mumsy stuff gives me the boak. Reading about this new comedy I was immediately left cold and queasy: a sitcom about the stresses of "middle-class motherhood"? No thanks. And then I watched it and loved it, because the glorious, furious, stressed-out mother in this is clearly also nauseated by the horrors of motherhood.

Anna Maxwell Martin plays Julia, a frantically busy working mother who goes through hell trying to take the brats to school, only to find it's closed for half-term. Her mum is refusing to babysit any longer and Amanda, the soulless blonde Queen of the Alpha Mummies at the trendy cafe admires Julia for being able to hold down a job and simply "switch off" her family. Oh, I would just "hate myself too much", she simpers with silky poison. I was surprised at how much I loved this, given the recent glut of miserable sitcom pilots, but this one is written by Graham Linehan and Sharon Horgan. Enough said.