Sisters of Mercy:This Way Up S2.

Aisling Bea's second series of the wonderful This Way Up begins, roughly, where the first one left off but it ends, necessarily, in a world of approaching lockdown, people in masks, and television news readers reading stories about coronavirus. 

To some, this imposition of reality may seem a step too far but This Way Up always feels a very real, and very heartfelt, show. Set against an instantly recognisable London backdrop of rainy streets, number 27 buses, William Hill bookies, beeping car horns, Subways, Desert Island Discs on taxi radios, and faceless steel and glass office blocks (sometimes even easily identifiable locations come in to view:St Pancras International, King's Road, and, even, without being exploitative, the Grenfell Tower), the characters, too, feel utterly believable.

In all their hopes, dreams, desires, faults, silliness, and anxieties. Aine (Bea herself) has finally got round to dating widower Richard (Tobias Menzies), the daughter of her language pupil Etienne (Dorian Grover), and it's all going well. They get on well, they make each other laugh, and they clearly fancy the pants off each other. But Richard has one small problem. His penis. His grieving penis. His soft grieving penis.

Although he's more than able to compensate in other ways, Aine wants him to feel the same pleasure as she gets from him. But is a sexy dance routine to Peaches 'Fuck the Pain Away' really the answer? Aine's teaching career, too, is going well and her colleague James (Ekow Quartey) is even offering her in on a new business venture.

Aine's sister, Shona (Sharon Horgan), is doing okay on both the personal and the business front. Or at least it seems so on the surface. She's moved out to the sticks to a massive, architecturally impressive, house with a huge garden and, best of all, heated floors with her partner Vish (Aasif Mandvi) and their marriage is looming. 

Shona is looking forward to marrying Vish but she can't quite shake the affair she had with her business partner Charlotte (Indira Varma) out of her head - and Charlotte most definitely can't. Claiming she'd "rather be set fire to in a bin" than attend the ceremony. While Vish is away in New York for work, Shona sits around her big empty house fantasising about Charlotte - and biscuits.

These scenes of realistically portrayed listlessness are juxtaposed with several genuinely moving moments. An unexpected hug from Etienne for Aine as he leaves for France, a tearful taxi ride home after overhearing a heartbreaking conversation, and a late night biscuit delivery. Which is not a euphemism. More than anything, a shock phone call from the rehab centre that is acted out as subtly as it is powerfully.

But it's not without laughs either. Eileen (Sorcha Cusak), as before, gets more than her fair share. She talks about wearing a tricolour sari to Shona and Vish's wedding and boasts that she has "survived a war - the Vietnam war". Some of the jokes could make milder mannered viewers blush. At one point a bout of enthusiastic cunnilingus is described as "panic eating a melting ice cream".

It is to Bea and her cast's credit that she mixes these silly jokes in with a genuinely touching drama in which you can't help but care what happens to the lead characters. More than funny one liners, there are amusing scenes of Aine consisting on a diet of lettuce, waffles, wine, and gin and Ricky Grover makes a winning reappearance as Tom, Aine's friend from rehab, too.

Credit should also be given to Kadiff Kirwan as Aine's flatmate Bradley, Ambreen Razia as Bradley's girlfriend Emma, Sophie Stone as Julie, Shona's secretary, and Oengus MacNamara (Pat) and Lorraine Ashbourne as Marcia. But mostly it goes to Horgan and, of course, Bea. We see the two sisters take saunas and play bodhrans and discuss the concept of men using vaginas like "warm, wet, garages to store their unhappiness".

The bond between them is so tight that when there is breach, or perceived breach of trust, between them it is one of This Way Up's most affecting moments. It's perhaps only topped by Aine's emotional speech in a pub toilet that jumps seamlessly from bathos to pathos in one sentence and loses absolutely nothing in doing so. In fact, that speech and that scene was, for me, emblematic of the whole series which manages to look at mental health and anxiety in a kind and thoughtful way but didn't forget to make some jokes along the way. Because, in my experience, that is how life is lived. Magnificent.