Sky Atlantic gears up for Super Wednesday with premiere of Veep series 3 and Silicon Valley

Traditionally the dog days of July and August are laugh-free zones as comedy bosses hold back their best material for the autumn when temperatures plummet and more people decide to spend a night in front of the box rather than basking in the dying rays outdoors. The same applies to the best TV dramas which are usually reserved for post-summer premieres.

But Sky Atlantic has thrown such orthodoxies to the wind – for tonight at least – with a triple whammy of comedy gold.

First up is new comedy Silicon Valley at 9pm, a brilliant and unsparing dissection of the fads and foibles of California’s start-up geeks that is also rip-roaringly funny.

See our preview here.

After that there is the return of Armano Iannucci's Veep at 9:35pm, which sees Vice President Selina Meyer, played by Julia-Louis Dreyfus, running for President in what will unquestionably be an error-strewn campaign.

This new third series looks like it could be the best of the lot for a comedy that has already been nominated for a hatful of Emmys and is described in the current edition of Radio Times as the “tautest, snappiest, most vicious sitcom on TV”.

And if that’s not enough, the evening can be rounded off with a serving of TV’s hottest satirist in the form of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver at 10:10pm.

So there you have it – comedy. For the summer. And this time we’re not joking.