The tightly written, imaginatively directed Hancock and Joan (BBC Four) sketched the ill-fated affair of Tony Hancock and Joan Le Mesurier. Ken Stott played Hancock as having a kind of suburban charm (he sounded so like Richard Briers!) mixed with the monstrous ego of a striving performer. He was also an alcoholic and a nasty, nasty drunk. Maxine Peake as Joan wanted him to embrace domestic stability. John Le Mesurier, played by Alex Jennings, watched his wife leave him for a man he too loved.

There were some astonishing scenes and changes of tempo. Hancock was in a mess when the couple first met and in a mess at the end, but at least at the beginning he was sweet rather than self-consumed. He and Joan exchanged quiet confidences; she bolstered his self-esteem. There was a lovely, freewheeling set of scenes where he left comedy behind for Joan's home town of Ramsgate: days on the beach in the blowy wind, an excruciatingly funny encounter with a hoity-toity landlady, happy times with Joan's son.

Hancock eventually wanted to return to what he was famous for, his frustration exacerbated by his alcoholism. The relationship turned darkly rancorous. One dinner culminated in Hancock rounding viciously on Joan's mother, calling her a c***. Next, he tried to throw a table through a window at the hated “Kent” lying outside. Just as a doctor had forewarned her, Joan tried to match him drink for drink.

In a gruesome scene, Joan, gagging and shaking, mirrored Hancock gulp for gulp. The bottle emptied, Hancock simply produced another. She collapsed and tried to commit suicide. Joan and Hancock reunited, John Le Mesurier still stoic. Thinking Joan had rejected him (because of a series of miscommunications and family interference), Hancock died on tour in Australia; the director Richard Laxton, in a surreal interplay of colour and black and white, imagining a nightmarish, ultimately redemptive, final few hours.

This transfixing series of dramas begs the question: are any comedians happy? Or is it all tears of a clown: laughs and lightness with the spotlight on and darkness and misery away from it? If so, imagine The Ant and Dec Story in 30 years' time...

It seems a while since the last sighting, pre-writers' strike, of Desperate Houswives (Channel 4). In idler moments, I have been wondering how the new series would resolve the cliffhanger of Wisteria Lane slut Edie seemingly having committed suicide. Who's Edie? Cheez, put down your copies of Middlemarch. They're all of a type, you see - so there's Stepford mom Bree, chaotic mom Susan, relatively sane mom with the boring wardrobe and endless worthy storylines Lynette, and firecracker non-mom Gabrielle. Pretty lovelies, all.

Their cartoonish litany of suffering and melodramatics - murder, cheating husbands - was, as ever, given a comic, kitschy sheen: storylines twisted, turned and changed direction with delicious speed. Marc Cherry, the series's creator, wrote this first episode of the new series so Edie's attempted suicide by hanging (by scarf) was not only explained but then complicated instantaneously - wonderful, clever writing complemented by playful, slick direction.

Edie planned not to commit suicide but to make it look as though she had planned to so that Carlos, her love and obsession, felt so bad that he stayed with her. Yet just when she yanked on the rope Carlos was called away by a neighbour so she nearly did kill herself, but later discovered that Carlos had some offshore banking sleaze going on, so blackmailed him into staying with her instead.

Lynette admitted having cancer. She and her neighbours pledged that they would have no more secrets, but each of them was hiding something: Bree was faking carrying a child; Susan - Teri Hatcher, one of the most annoying actresses on TV - got quietly married and is now pregnant. And into the mix is a new desperate housewife with a past: her daughter doesn't seem to be her daughter.

If you were laughing, Bree's justification of faking the pregnancy and bringing up her daughter's baby - because she wanted to do a better job with this child than she had with her own - proved a moving corrective. I misted up anyway.

Out of the Box

That The Curse of Comedy season has been pulling no punches has caused disgruntlement among some of those closest to its subjects. The family of Harry H.Corbett, played by Jason Isaacs in last week's The Curse of Steptoe, was moved to write a complaint to the BBC, accusing the drama of insulting inaccuracies. A letter written by Corbett's nephew declared that his uncle's life “certainly wasn't miserable!” The BBC defended the drama, stating that it took “the utmost care to create balanced and fair portrayals”. But it has also come under fire from Dennis Heymer, the former lover of Frankie Howerd, who is looking to take legal action ahead of a broadcast of Rather You Than Me, starring David Walliams as Howerd, paired with a documentary When Frankie Met Dennis. Is this The Curse of The Curse of Comedy season?

Editor's choice

• Here comes summer: our cultural must-sees
• Friends reunited: Sex and the City
• New country for old men