Female TV comics brandish fantastic weapons: bravery, wit, self-deprecation

McEnany and Bamford, slowed by bad periods, have earned their big moments

Comedian Abby McEnany only just got her own Wikipedia page this year, a month after her Work in Progress debuted last December. Given how accomplished the series is, it is astonishing that these eight episodes were the first she ever wrote and acted for television. The 51-year-old acknowledges the concept is semi autobiographical, and self-identifies her always-in-a-slight-panic character Abby as a “fat queer dyke”. McEnany and co-writer Tim Mason have on-screen Abby working through past and ongoing anguish — of the mental, physical, familial, and professional varieties — with some help from that beautiful nonsense we call love.

In McEnany's