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Forget Squid Game, the darkest, most vicious show on the small screen now is a BBC sitcom about a family in Crawley, England.
A cult late-night hit which became an unlikely Bafta-winner, Such Brave Girls returns with a second series that’s just as unremittingly bleak and consistently funny as the first. While the story of a narcissistic single mother living with her dysfunctional daughters could easily have been the stuff of sombre drama, here everything from depression to desperation, abortion to extortion is fair game for creator-writer Kat Sadler’s caustic brand of comedy.
Sadler also stars as Josie: the less loved of forthright matriarch Deb’s two children, as she’s constantly reminded. An anxious oddball who fancies herself to be a poetically misunderstood tortured soul, she seems to be on the up in the opening scene, which finds her at art school, chatting to an apparent girlfriend. That is until her mother (Louise Brealey) and younger sister Billie (Lizzie Davidson) arrive on campus, put a bag on her head and drive her to a dingy roadside motel where she’s to get married that very afternoon.
Waiting for her at the altar is Seb (Freddie Meredith), a nauseating man-child who seems to be under the misapprehension that his semi-stalkerish presence equates to being in a real relationship with the very much homosexual Josie. Deb, uninterested in her daughter’s happiness or identity, insists she marry Seb as part of a scheme to get her own boyfriend, Dev (Paul Bazely), to tie the knot.
Following the world’s saddest wedding — which goes ahead after the bride tries to escape and the groom has to be talked down from the roof — things go from bad to worse for the self-proclaimed “three horsewomen of the apocalypse”. Time and again we see their dreams (or rather wild delusions) fall apart. As Deb struggles to win back Dev after she’s caught in a lie, Billie’s abandonment issues are compounded by an uncommitted sugar daddy. Josie, meanwhile, tries in vain to get herself sectioned in a bid to escape Seb and a mother who makes Goya’s Saturn look like a solicitous parent.
Though the episodes are kept short and punchy, the show’s relentless cynicism, vulgarity and utter lack of sentiment can be exhausting. But there’s also something invigorating about the dynamic shared by the three leads and the irreverent yet honest approach to taboo subjects.
Both these qualities can be explained by Sadler’s proximity to the work. Not only is Davidson her actual sister, but Josie is born of her own personal battles with depression. In having the courage and chutzpah to laugh about her experiences, she may well make it easier for others to talk about theirs.
★★★★☆
Episodes 3 & 4 on BBC3 on July 10 at 10pm. On BBC iPlayer from July 3 and on Hulu in the US from July 7
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