There is no better news, as the holiday dedicated to our Lord draws to a close and the privations of Lent become a mere memory, than to hear a new comedy by Julia Davis is just days away.
Davis, of course, was the woman behind one of television's best comedies, Nighty Night.
Nighty Night, of course, was her 2004 comedy starring herself and Ruth Jones (Myfanwy from Little Britain and later Stella in Stella).
If you don't know all this already, you are most certainly unworthy, culturally unaware and possibly have a rash, but try to keep up.
In Nighty Night Davis played a murderous, grasping and unhinged beauty therapist obsessed with a doctor.
Her latest outing, which features The Thick of It creator Armando Iannucci in the producers' credits, is Hunderby.
The stunningly written dark comedy is set in ''the year of our Lord 1831'', when the Bethany Rose is wrecked off Hunderby.
The plot centres on Helene, a stowaway washed ashore, rescued, then courted by Edmund, a local pastor.
But dark memories haunt her sleep - memories of easy virtue and possibly murder.
And Pastor Edmund is not much of a catch.
''Youth has almost spread its wings and fled you,'' he tells her.
''You are untouched?''
''I would be forced to stone to death with my own Christian hand any wife of mine who'd ere lain with a lover.''
When a letter from Helene confessing her past is lost under a carpet, the pair marry (the congregation missed the wedding, preferring to go to a hanging) and move into Edmund's stately home, under the malevolently watchful eye of housekeeper Dorothy (Davis).
The humour is not just dark - it is lyrical.
Dorothy tells Edmund of his unwell mother's condition: ''Mistress Matilde is still abed, sir, she complained of vipers lashing her insides ... Her bowel has still not spoken, sir, though I fancy I caught a whisper.''
When Helene is concerned about strange groans and moans in the house, Dorothy tells her ''it is most likely owls, ma'am - they do defecate through their mouths''.
Pastor Edmund sees his new wife in the bath, and compares her, in a less than flattering way, with his last.
''Nature did not busy her broken mound with such a black and forceful brush.''
There is the most fabulous and painfully hilarious sex scene, as Edward does his best to consummate the marriage.
But was Edmund's former wife as beautiful as he suggests?We hear the servants describing her ''face half eaten with herpes''.
Hunderby won two British comedy awards in 2012 for the show, and a Bafta for best comedy writing.
It begins this Thursday on UKTV. It must not be missed.
- Charles Loughrey
