The Worst Week of My Life (UK)

The week before a wedding can be fraught, but for publisher Howard Steele, marrying the delectable Mel, it becomes a nightmare of gargantuan proportions. Everything that can possibly go wrong does go wrong, much of the chaos resulting from Howard's earnest attempts to do the right thing. Cassie, an office colleague with whom he had a one-night-stand at the Christmas party two years previously, turns out to be homicidally obsessed with him and sets out to wreck the imminent nuptials.

Howard's sycophantic attempts to schmooze his in-laws-to-be (a High Court judge and his society wife) fall on stony ground and their relationship becomes virtually terminal when - through a sequence of unfortunate events - Howard hospitalises Mel's granny, accidentally gropes her mother, loses the wedding ring (a family heirloom) and, worst of all, kills the family dog. Other disasters to plague Howard include his best man falling into a coma on the stag night (to be replaced by Howard's mate Dom), Cassie running over the vicar, his wide-boy father taking his new girlfriend - a mouthy pole-dancer - to the wedding, and getting arrested.

The Worst Week Of My Life was a real rarity: a decent, British 21st-century sitcom that wasn't performer/star written (as were Spaced, The League Of Gentlemen, Phoenix Nights, I'm Alan Partridge and their like). A classy comedy of errors from Bussell and Sbresni, two of the creative team behind Barbara, the show expertly exploited its central premise to the fullest degree and was enriched by a first-rate cast, particularly Geoffrey Whitehead as Dick, a towering monolith of suppressed rage and percolating loathing.