or some reason, there aren’t that many truly stressful sitcoms. Given the choice between watching a bunch of attractive friends trade slick witticisms in a cafe, or a sadsack loser ricochet from one catastrophic decision to another until his entire existence becomes a nightmare of self-inflicted high-frequency anguish, most people would, inexplicably, choose the former. This is a shame because, when they’re done well, nothing on Earth can touch the stresscom. Think Fawlty Towers at full-speed. Think Andy Daly’s Review. Think The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret. None of these shows are particularly fun to watch, because they’re all the televisual equivalent of having a coronary on a rowing machine, but they are so meticulously constructed that you cannot help being impressed by them. The newest inductee to the Hall of Stresscoms is arguably one of the best. Currently airing on Thursdays on BBC Two, Semi-Detached is a real-time sitcom in which Lee Mack, playing a hyperventilating dollop of a man named Stuart, is forced to navigate some of the worst half-hours of his life. In episode one, he attempts to revive a neighbour from a diabetic coma from inside a locked caravan while saving own his marriage, having first consumed a full tub of psychotropic hummus. In another, he realises that he has become both a people trafficker and a drug smuggler on board a cross-Channel ferry. A further episode contains an armed hostage situation and full-frontal nudity. Try to imagine watching the last 15 minutes of Uncut Gems over and over again in a refraction chamber full of wasps. That is roughly what watching Semi-Detached is like. I mean that as a compliment. The beauty of Semi-Detached is seeing how David Crow and Oliver Maltman’s scripts buff every possible element to the highest level of anxiety. Stuart is hapless and passive, and has rebounded into an unsuitable marriage with a much younger woman after his MP wife – who lives across the road – left him for a man who hates him. His dad, who lives with him, takes too many drugs. His brother is on the run from the police. There is a baby. People gouge him for money at every turn. He has irritable bowel syndrome, which comes into play during a toilet scene so unbearably extended that it becomes a diarrhoea-based equivalent to Sideshow Bob standing on rakes. It is a thing of meticulous construction. It’s a Ferrari disguised as a Mondeo. And central to everything is the lead performance by Mack. I was recently breathlessly proclaiming the show’s brilliance online, and a few replies suggested that they had been put off from watching because of Not Going Out, Mack’s last big sitcom. And that’s understandable, because that show was big and broad and so deliberately mainstream that it could often come off as a little anodyne. But the difference between the two shows is night and day. There, Mack was playing a charmer. Here, he’s playing a tragic case of intergalactic proportions. And he gives it everything. Every episode is a half-hour strangulation for him, and he fully commits to letting the light drain from his eyes while circumstances close in around him. He isn’t necessarily known as an actor, thanks to his fondness for panel shows, but that just makes this role all the more startling. It should win awards. The viewing experience is odd. I watch Semi-Detached through my fingers while experiencing violent palpitations, and yet I desperately want more of it. This year, 2020, is by far the most stressful in recent memory, and Semi-Detached is easily its most stressful show. Which, at least by my logic, makes it one of the best.