Q&A with Jeremy Dyson and Sharon Horgan

Will Psychobitches have a male spin-off in the future, Psychobastards?

Writer-director Jeremy Dyson let the question hang in the air a second, revealing the suggestion has been raised as 'a semi-serious thing', before adding 'but the point of this is that it's women. Hitler's been done to death…'

He was speaking following the screening of a taster of the second series at Kilkenny's Cat Laughs Festival, which is sponsored by Psychobitches broadcaster Sky.

And while we won't be seeing Hitler anytime soon, Sharon Horgan said that she is keeping up her rate of playing a Nazi 'every series'. Last series she portrayed propaganda film-maker Leni Riefenstahl; this time she plays Unity Mitford, channelling the fascist-supporting aristocrat through the perky tunes of the Andrews Sisters, alongside Samantha Spiro and Sophie Ellis-Bextor, as two of the other Mitford Sisters.

Horgan revealed that she shot seven characters in five 'semi-mental' days for the new series, including Black Beauty novelist Anna Sewell, a swordfighting Lucrezia Borgia and Grace Kelly as part of a survivors group of Hitchcock's women. But she admitted that she struggled to sustain the correct accent from one character to another, secreting an earphone at all times to supply her with discreet YouTube samples of their speech. She watched Salma Hayek's portrayal of Frida Kahlo in the 2012 biopic to inspire her own, but joked that most of her research came from Wikipedia.

Interestingly, both Horgan and Dyson made the construction of these delusional characters sound like competitive auditions, with the actors helping shape their personalities. Horgan consistently wondered if she could 'throw a bit of Ivana Trump' into her interpretations and claimed that 'it's about trying to find a shorthand for the character, so it's as funny as it can be'.

With the second series still being edited, Dyson promises more 'all singing, all dancing' scenes than before as the historical figures unload their psychological problems on to Rebecca Front's therapist. These routines include the return of Katy Brand leading the Brontë sisters as bawdy, little singing dolls. Horgan feigned annoyance on hearing that Spiro was doing Lucille Ball, yet rallied when she learned that Mae West remained 'up for grabs'.

Dyson, in his first directing role, had nixed the Pulling star's suggestion that she play Simone de Beauvoir as 'an Irish chick lit novelist', settling instead on a less radical projection of 'French'.

Of all the deceased historical and mythical figures ('no fictional characters' is one of the series' rules), the only one to cause Dyson enough disquiet to drop the idea completely was Karen Carpenter, whose life was 'so devastating, it felt wrong'. However, he admit: 'Normally if it feels wrong, I take a run at it...'

'You did Anne Frank!' blurted Horgan, incredulous.

Dyson diplomatically dodged the question of more series by stating he was too busy finishing the current one to concern himself. Horgan was blunter, venturing that 'we need to wait for a few more people to die first.'

Both writers championed the sketch format, despite Dyson acknowledging that shows like the 'deeply unprofitable' League of Gentlemen were 'very expensive and labour-intensive'. He hailed Cardinal Burns and quirky internet youth showcase Worm City as evidence that the format remains in rude health.

Horgan meanwhile, singled out RTE2's Your Bad Self as 'made for nothing but full of brilliant ideas'.

Perhaps most controversially, while she claimed to be a devotee of the critically consecrated Louie, her director plumped for the altogether more surprising Two And A Half Men. The League's sole non-acting member claims he genuinely admires 'a show I thought I would never like, it's not even a guilty pleasure'.

Offering advice to aspiring sketch writers, Dyson reckons it's essential to 'get your stuff in front of a live audience, that's the best education … nothing teaches you quicker than not getting laughs'. Horgan added that when she was beginning her career, she filmed as much as she could and sent it out as widely as possible: 'You can't be scared about showing it to people'.

Also previewing at the festival was the third instalment of Charlie Brooker and Dan Maier's police procedural spoof A Touch of Cloth. Perhaps it was the experience of seeing it as a 100-minute film in a cinema but the gags felt less forced, the script more focused and the hit rate more consistent than in the earlier mini-series.

With an enigmatic killer targeting those close to troubled DCI Jack Cloth (John Hannah), Too Cloth For Comfort is once again dense with Naked Gun-style daftness, with a lovely, throwaway nod to Scandinavian crime drama and a gratuitous crossover with Sky's football coverage, while high-profile cast addition Karen Gillan slips neatly into the squad as ingenue detective Newblood.

Sky's other show previewing at Kilkenny was new, Irish TV presenter Baz Ashmawy's 50 Ways To Kill Your Mammy. Lauded, if cruelly referred to, as a 'real-life cross between Mrs Brown's Boys and Moone Boy' by one audience member I overheard. With perhaps a touch of Jackass I'd suggest, I'm not sure if it can sustain a full series.

But the episode screened was pretty eye-popping. Having heard the exploits of her son's filming and gallivanting around the world, 70-year-old Dublin pensioner Nancy Ashmawy has now joined him in trying such extreme activities as bounty hunting, sky diving and scream therapy. There are obvious, easy laughs in watching a woman of Nancy's advanced years and nervous disposition firing a semi-automatic machine gun in the Nevada desert but the tenderness between her and Baz seldom strays into mawkishness, not least as he pressures her into tasering him at one point, which feels slightly exploitative.

Still, she's the definition of a game old girl and the resolve she shows to try an 18,000 ft parachute jump on her birthday is pretty inspiring.

– From Jay Richardson in Kilkenny

Published: 2 Jun 2014