Catastrophe episode 6, finale review: This sitcom deserves cult status

So it’s goodbye, then, to Catastrophe (Channel 4). As the protagonists might say, it’s been a blast.

Being the last episode, the show is forgiven a little schmaltz as we see Rob and Sharon (Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan, stars and writers) swimming in azure waters to a bright new future, deeply in love, with a new baby on the way. “Why not?” says Rob, uncharacteristically when Sharon breaks the news. He declares his insatiable physical attraction to her in typically robust terms, unsuitable for transcription here, and she tells him, sweetly: “You look so handsome.”

You wonder whether being that luvvy duvvy will suit them, long term, but we’ll never know. Possibly just as well.

Considering it’s Catastrophe, a thoroughly sardonic chronicle of modern manners, they don’t get through the half hour without a bereavement, a brawl and a threat of divorce along the way, however. Don’t forget that the show is inspired by a line from the film Zorba the Greek, as uttered by Anthony Quinn: “Am I not a man? And is a man not stupid? I’m a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe.”

Rob, Sharon and kids arrive in Boston, Massachusetts, for an idyllic family holiday only to be greeted by Rob’s sister Sydney (Michaela Watkins) with news that their mum is dead. The consequences are – almost – devastating.

The death of Mia, who had been played by Carrie Fisher, dominates proceedings, and it is poignant to see her face on an easel on a New England beach as Rob reads his tribute to her. The most enjoyably and sometimes incoherently vicious passage is an email by her that she sent to her friend, explaining why she was buying so much tat on eBay for charity: “I heard about these babies whose spines are like corkscrews. Once they have the surgeries they can play hockey, rollerblade. I mean I wouldn’t have to do it all if this government gave a rat’s ass about disabled kids. They’d be happy just to throw ’em out of a window.

“I bet Mike Pence spends his Sundays throwing disabled kids out of windows. Looks like he would, that f***ing microwaved apple-looking ass motherf***er.” From what we know of her opinions, that’s a fitting tribute to Carrie also.

No surprise, then, that when we meet Rob’s long-estranged father Ryan (Mitchell Mullen), we understand one of the tensions in that parental relationship. For dad is a wife-beating, drunken, self-confessed bigot who steals the show a bit too easily with his appalling opinions: “I hated Obama but I respect him. After eight years he could have put his feet up, not spending all that time organising fake school shootings.”

Dad is also noticeably jaundiced, literally as well as metaphorically, which he shrugs off as a symptom of cirrhosis of the liver, an occupational hazard of being who he is.

It is another testament to their skills that Horgan and Delaney manage to insert a racist with a terminal illness into their sitcom as if it was the most natural thing in the world, which, I suppose, given the prevalence of such things, it is.

So, too, was Rob’s cruel taunting of Sharon as she showed a slightly selfish desire to combine major grief with family beach fun, and the all-too-believable scrap with his dad at the funeral reception, an elderly relative suffering collateral damage. There are dark, bleak, depressing moments before the final surrender to optimism of the soul.

There’s really been nothing quite like Catastrophe on our screens before, and it deserves its cult status for the quality of everything the production team do, not least the stunning cinematography in this finale. Thanks, all. I’m glad Catastrophe died happy.