TV/Online review: This Country, BBC Three

The comedy here is very much in the margins. In a look or an aside.

Daisy and Charlie Cooper interview

The brother-sister duo behind the revolutionary BBC comedy on their childhood feuds, "the Mr Perkins scandal", and stalking Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen in Cirencester.

Daisy May Cooper: "I might change my name by deed poll"

The actor and writer on the return of her cult sitcom This Country, shopping at Sports Direct and college days with James Norton.

Weird to think that we never saw the funniest character on television this year. Kerry's mum was a screeching, furious off-screen presence, constantly howling abuse at her daughter from three rooms away during the magnificent - and criminally overlooked - This Country. The woman was magnificent.

BBC Three has released some excellent comedy over the last few years -- Fleabag, Pls Like, People Just Do Nothing -- but This Country marks the crowning jewel of 2017's output. Basically The Office for the Cotswolds, the series focusses on Kerry and Kurtain, two imbecilic cousins who cause trouble for everyone around them. Writers/siblings Charlie and Daisy Cooper play the bumbling duo with hilarious ease, poking fun at life in the West Country while also showing compassion for the people they're mocking. Where Hot Fuzz focussed on an entire town, though, This Country boils everything down to our insular, arrogant, terrible twosome.

The 20 best TV comedies of 2017

Here - in no particular order - are the 20 best shows from 2017.

The best comedy is written in turbulent times

If, in 2017, you needed respite from our dire economic prospects, the whims of Donald Trump or the Damoclean sword of North Korea, you could find it on British television. Three of the year's best new shows - Pls Like, This Country and Back - were welcome proof that reports of the death of the sitcom have been greatly exaggerated.