10 Incredibly Dark British TV Comedy Series You NEED To Watch
3. Nighty Night
In the world of comedy, there's nobody quite like Julia Davis.
Her often controversial work exposes the ugliness that hides behind closed doors and shows just how awful everyday people can be. It just so happens that she's also one of the funniest women on the planet, and her breakthrough success with Nighty Night remains a testament to that fact.
It tells the story of sociopathic beauty salon owner Jill Tyrell (played to poisonous perfection by Davis herself), who takes her husband's recent bowel cancer diagnosis to be her ticket to a new life. Before long, she's lying about her husband's passing, and attempting to seduce her neighbor Don - much to the chagrin of his oft-neglected wife Cathy, a timid soul who suffers from Multiple Sclerosis.
Jill is one of comedy's great monsters, who lies, deceives, and bullies those around her in brutal fashion, and yet she's attained a cult following that persists to this very day.
Nighty Night is undeniably vile stuff, but it's genuinely hilarious in the most vicious way imaginable. Its second and final series was a little too reliant on gross-out humour and shock value for many, but its first outing is undeniably a masterclass in uncomfortable comedy.