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The Guardian
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Such Brave Girls: TV so hilariously savage it will make you yowl with pleasure
I love watching real-life siblings on-screen. They bring a knotted history to every interaction, the way they look at one another, or don't. They may love each other; they're definitely stuck with each other. Daisy May and Charlie Cooper were the last to bottle such contradiction; I'm delighted we now have Such Brave Girls (BBC One, Wednesday 2 July, 11.40pm), returning for a second series, in which creator Kat Sadler stars alongside her sister Lizzie Davidson. Cattier than Longleat, it features some of the most savage writing on TV, and makes me yowl with pleasure. It's about traumatised women making terrible choices. Bear with. The ever-excellent Louise Brealey plays Deb, whose husband abandoned his family 10 years ago after popping to the shop for teabags. In financial trouble, she spends her time trying to lock down relations with drippy, slippery widower Dev, played by Paul Bazely, explicitly for his big house. Single-mindedness has made her grim, grasping and less maternal than a stressed hamster. Bad news for daughters Josie and Billie, who give off the stench of joint captivity, and have split into twin coping strategies: one depressed and passive, the other overconfident, bullish and equally lost. There are many jokes about sex, all three women wildly pursuing or running away from ludicrous men. But its most adult theme is desperation, which every character is thinly masking. One of the funniest running jokes is the way Deb and Billie dismiss the 'haunting presence' of Josie. Deb has no time for her depressed daughter's big feelings, interest in art or grapples with lesbianism. Life is about finding a man and moving in with him. She urges her to 'Remember the family crest! Ignore, repress, forget.' Scowling harder than Kanye West, Davidson gets to spit the most deliciously vicious lines. 'She only shaves one leg,' she hisses of an unmarried aunt, 'so when she sleeps on her side she can pretend a man is spooning her.' She's no fan of Josie's rare smile, either. 'Your mouth's doing the right thing, but your eyes are calling Samaritans.' Having turned her obsessive attention away from drug-dealing Nicky, she's now chasing a much older, married man. (They meet in the mornings, as he's too tired to get an erection at night.) 'There's nothing wrong with having an affair, right?' she asks, a shade of self-awareness crossing her face. 'I honestly think it might be the most feminist thing you can do,' responds Josie. The first series announced Sadler as a brilliant voice. Her writing pitilessly skewers the discourse around pop-feminism, queerness, sexuality and mental health. Pitiless does not mean unempathetic – the show was born of personal experience. During lockdown, Sadler revealed to Davidson that she'd spent time on a psych ward after twice trying to kill herself, and her sister admitted she was £20,000 in debt. They found themselves laughing. If you're in a raw place, the fun they have with self-harm, workplace shooting, dissociation and the self-delusion required to live a lie until you die, may be too much. For most of us, it's the medicine. Directed by Simon Bird of The Inbetweeners, and co-produced by A24, there's big underwriting, too. The first series saw a few mannered performances from the supporting cast, but these have settled in now. Its female trinity remain a scream, as the story tacks farcical in ways I won't spoil here. Let's just say they're riding that family crest like a surfboard into disaster. Dark comedy is a phrase overused, and perhaps meaningless. Granted, you have to be the kind of person who finds a mother warning her daughter, 'Try not to poison this family with your personality' funny to get Such Brave Girls. I'd argue that is the central brain-stem of the British psyche. There are strains of Peep Show, Julia Davies, Sharon Horgan and Fleabag. Like them, the show has no message other than that life is absurd, pain inevitable and people ridiculous. That makes it more clear-sighted and honest than any show telling us what to think. And you get sisters tearing strips off each other. Truly, there is eloquence in blood.
BBC News
13 hours ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Such Brave Girls: The dark comedy inspired by 'bleak' dating scene
Horrible snogs. Hideous outfits. Heinous bursts of laughter, that's how real-life sisters Kat Sadler and Lizzie Davidson describe the new series of their BBC comedy Such Brave Girls."Being able to have schemes and do twisted things and [to] come from a female perspective, that was really exciting," says Sadler, who wrote the Bafta-winning dark Brave Girls follows sisters Josie (Sadler) and Billie (Davidson) who, along with their mum Deb (Louise Brealey), are desperately trying to keep their heads above water financially and their relationships the rave reviews for series one, the siblings were unsure how the series would be received. "We do talk about a lot of taboo subjects," Davidson says of the comedy, which addresses mental health, parental abandonment and abortion in a not-so-sensitive series one, we see Billie go to an abortion clinic dressed as a witch while another episode sees mum Deb tell Josie her "haunting presence" is dampening Deb's boyfriend's series took home two Baftas – one for best scripted comedy and one for emerging talent: fiction for Sadler. Approaching a follow-up was "nerve-wracking", Sadler admits, explaining how the two bronze awards on her bedside table now seem to loom over her. "I feel like they're judging me," she Davidson feels the success has helped them get away with more this time around and Sadler agrees, adding: "I've really put the characters through the ringer this year. It's more depressing, but maybe more funny." 'The funniest person in the world' Davidson says the series is influenced by their upbringing: "Growing up in an all-woman household, it was just us two and Mum, I think that's the way we see life, like scheming in the bathroom."Much of the action in the show takes place in the lavatory, with the women plotting to make money or manipulate their their characters are cutting in the way they speak to each other, off-screen the sisters are far more earnest, with Sadler explaining how Davidson's off-hand comments have helped her work through plot points that she's been stuck on for adds that she feels lucky to have her sister in the show. "She's the funniest person in the world," she aback and slightly teary, Davidson explains how she'll read early drafts of the script from Sadler under her covers, laughing and jealous of her sister's talent."I hate her. I hate her. I wish it was me. It's so brilliant how nuanced the writing is," she says smiling. The siblings' dynamic is not the only thing influencing the comedy, with Sadler explaining their mum will often send her ideas for plots. "She's really invested," Sadler of series one, she ran through the prospective storylines with her mum."It's not her, but it's definitely inspired by stories that happened to us. So I wanted her to be happy with it," Sadler adds."She signed off everything - she's got the darkest sense of humour of all of us." 'Worst nightmare' Sadler says a lot of her writing is fuelled by the things she sees online and in the news, like the "bleak" dating the new series, mum Deb says the girls are "better dead than single" - a sentiment that runs through the series as the sisters try to cling on to their says she became interested in the idea of being intentionally single, after seeing it all over her TikTok feels this has become more common and adds that a lot of her friends are single. One recent report found that the four most popular dating apps in the UK - Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and Grindr - had all lost UK users between May 2023 and May writer says that while there's lots of empowering things about being single, "it's also very lonely" and she wanted to satirise this idea in her show by having it be the girls' "worst nightmare." With the new series, Sadler wants to continue to "skewer" topical issues and taboo subjects. She says she's particularly proud of how they handled Billie's abortion storyline in series one."I'm so sick of seeing stories about pregnancy and that maternal instinct immediately kicking," Sadler says, adding, "that's not reality for a lot of people. It's not how I feel." 'The truth of being disgusting' The "most important" thing for Sadler was to keep complex women at the centre of the comedy series and to show how grotesque the women can be towards each scenes in the series revolve around the siblings and their mother spewing vicious comments at each other."I think that we haven't seen it before, really, the truth of being disgusting and the way that we talk about each other."You can watch Such Brave Girls on BBC Three and iPlayer on Thursday 3 July.
