For stand-up comedians accustomed to mining their personal lives for material, writing a semi-autobiographical sitcom is practically a rite of passage. The latest series to join that illustrious tradition is Kat Sadler and Lizzie Davidson’s Such Brave Girls, a punchy comedy that concerns the dysfunctional lives of sisters Josie (Sadler) and Billie (Davidson, Sadler’s real-life sister) and their single mother, Deb (Louise Brealey). Viewers quickly learn that Josie and Billie’s father went out to get teabags 10 years ago and never came back, leaving the siblings and their mother with a pile of debt and a slew of abandonment issues.
All three women suffer from a compulsive need to hold down the men in their lives. Billie is on a mission to win back ex-boyfriend Nicky (Sam Buchanan), who’s more interested in partying than he is in her. Because of her abandonment issues, Josie feels that she needs a stable boyfriend, even though she isn’t attracted to men. Seb (Freddie Meredith) is more than happy to fill that role, as long as she gives him two handjobs a week. (He isn’t too bothered by her obvious queerness, assuming it exists purely for his arousal.) Meanwhile, Deb is anxious to impress new beau Dev (Paul Bazely), a cringeworthy iPad-addict whose rumored wealth potentially spells the end of the family’s financial woes—even if Deb can’t bear to look at him while they have sex.
While Josie is artsy, awkward, and a hopeless romantic, Billie is acerbic, flighty, and insecure. Despite their frequent, light-hearted clashes, the two are bracingly honest with each other when it comes to their mental health and suicidal thoughts. Sadler refrains, though, from turning this into some sort of self-congratulatory awareness manifesto. She isn’t afraid of making jokes at her own expense, like when Josie and her part-time lover (Jude Mack) literally get off on sharing stories from their troubled pasts, pointing to an unhealthy fetishization of trauma.
After visiting a church, Billie has the realization that all her issues could be solved by religion, as God is “a man who can never leave you.” The real men in the series invariably fail to live up to the versions of masculinity that are expected of them. Nicky only resurfaces to persuade Billie to get an abortion. Seb is needy and insecure. Dev refuses to pay for anything and yearns after his dead wife. In this way, Such Brave Girls slyly subverts typical gender norms.
Many of the show’s laugh-out-loud moments come courtesy of Deb, who’s terrified of her own emotions and spectacularly oblivious to the impact that her stringent ideas about femininity have had on her daughters. She sees mental illness predominantly as a financial affliction, often joking that the family must eradicate emotions that they cannot “afford”—which, despite its arch delivery, serves as a thought-provoking commentary on the relationship between mental health and privilege. Still, Deb is begrudgingly protective of her daughters, even if her methods—like taking Josie shopping for “feminine” clothes—are cringingly misguided.
With off-beat humor, zippy dialogue, and intelligently posed questions about what “girlhood” means, Such Brave Girls is reminiscent of Lena Dunham’s Girls. And like that show, it will likely ruffle more than a few feathers, not least because of its repeated jokes about suicide. It’s honest to the point of abrasive, and at times downright ridiculous. But it’s also wickedly funny and looks mental illness dead in the eye with a daring grin.
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