Catastrophe

It’s easy to feel like your life is a mess.  Maybe you’re not where you thought you would be by this age.  Maybe your social channels lead you to believe that your lifestyle is not as enviable as your friends’.  Maybe it seems like everyone you know is desperately repopulating the earth with constant progeny whose names you’ll never really be arsed to learn while you’re channelling your energies into writing an unpopular blog about your views on recent TV shows you have been watching.  Well, have I got the show for you!  This week, we are doing Catastrophe.  I had somehow completely missed this show’s existence, yet became conscious of the appearances of creators Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney as separate guests on a number of different podcasts whose back catalogues I am working through while sitting on buses wondering how far I can let my nose peak out of my facemask before someone scowls at me.

But there it was one evening on my unnavigable Amazon Prime EPG, drawing me in during one spare half hour before bedtime.  The comedy-drama’s origins arise in a business travel fling conducted between Delaney’s Rob Norris, our American in London, and Horgan’s Sharon Morris, our Irish fortysomething single lady at home in the capital.  Norris returns to the States, but Morris has conceived a baby and it’s this mini Norris-Morris that forces Sharon and Rob to upheave their whole lives while they work out what to do next.  Can a brief affair last for four hilarious and poignant series while Sharon and Rob repeatedly end up almost self-sabotaging their own happiness?  Well, yes.

Despite originating on opposite sides of the Atlantic, Rob and Sharon’s shared sense of humour unites them into a lasting bond which neither of their respective misdemeanours ever successfully ruptures, though you repeatedly worry each time that this will surely be the end.  Trading affectionate insults while scraping back the fanciful façade in which so many marriages shroud themselves for palatable public consumption, we’re shown a truthful relationship awash with painfully raw honesty, yet still dogged with sufficient dishonesty to engender tension.  We never shy away from the blood, sweat and tears required to keep things going.  At first, I found the bickering difficult, unused as I was to such harsh storytelling.  I couldn’t hook myself into a likeability anchor with any of the main characters.  But as time progresses and the Catastrophisers grow more familiar, a familiarity develops, and you become equally invested in their happiness.  And with this comes even greater laughs – by the end of the fourth season I was disturbing my neighbours with my chortles.  Well, I imagined I was, but one was probably screaming into his headset while playing computer games and the folk upstairs were having another lockdown party with reggaeton dancing.

Most importantly, nothing is overly dramatised.  Rob’s own struggle with alcoholism in particular, while blowing up rather climactically, progresses there with a believability that makes it all the more horrific.  In short, everyone is struggling, including Rob and Sharon’s own family and friends.  Extras’ Ashley Jensen is worth her weight in gold as Fran, Sharon’s old friend who’s on call with a passive-aggressive comment at every juncture, until her own life starts to fall apart thanks to husband Chris or precocious actor son Jeffrey.  Sharon’s brother persists in being a hot mess throughout proceedings while Rob’s own friends and colleagues veer from one crisis to the next.  It’s probably only occasional babysitter Anna (played by Misfits’ goddess Lauren Socha) who has her life most on track, simply because she’s too laid back to care.  Or too young.

Storylines scatter and scarper, but, throughout, the kids are refreshingly ignored.  Rob and Sharon’s growing brood rarely come to centre stage, unless the plot requires them to bite someone or to have a name that’s difficult to pronounce.  This is about how hard it is to be an adult, a parent, a person.  The kids have it easy and are therefore not of interest.  Catastrophe’s episodes thus became essential comfort, four sets of six charming half hours to enjoy in the bath or at the end of a long day trapped inside.  The wit zips along with intelligence, anything generic is jettisoned and we’re left with a perfect balance of pure enjoyment and tempering miserable realism.  Any show that fails to acknowledge life is disastrous will ring hollow after Catastrophe, so you might as well view it yourself in order to distract from the terrible mess you have made of things.

Misfits

I’ve never really bought superheroes.  People wang on about the latest addition to the interminable Marvel Character Universe and I seem to zone out immediately.  What we can bear to watch comes down to what we can buy as a reality in which a story can play out.  My own mother can’t abide anything supernatural as it’s simply not realistic enough.  As a result, she cheerfully refuses to engage with the entire wizarding world of Harry Potter.  Sometimes I can’t work out why I’ll buy the things I’ll buy and reject the others.  Zombies?  Count me in no matter what (The Walking Dead and Kingdom).  Vampires?  Excuse me while I reminisce about loving True Blood.  I even sat through every season of Lost, long after I’d lost all hope of ever working out what I was actually buying.  But, typically, I’ll reject anything to do with costumed heroes.  So why, then, am I covering Misfits this week?

Well the truth is that I am behind with my boxset consumption and haven’t polished off anything new in a while.  But my viewing experience’s loss is your blog-reading pleasure’s gain, as I know we all love to trawl the archives.  I’ve cast my mind back to a show that did in fact deal with the real-life consequences of developing superpowers: Misfits.  The premise was not only a great excuse for orange jumpsuits, but also a sure-fire way to ponder the age-old question of just how much great power comes with which sort of great responsibility.  The premise was thus: some pesky youths on community service get caught up in a mysterious storm.  Superhuman new abilities ensue, with our drama served up by two sources: our characters coming to terms with their new faculties and the same characters coming across other individuals who enhanced their natural gifts in the storm’s rage.

Whenever I think what power I would have if I were a superhero, I always arrive at the conclusion that I can’t be improved.  I’ve occasionally thought it would be nice to be a bit taller, but I don’t think Slightly Taller Man would be a welcome addition to the Avengers when they’re next doing some of their assembling.  But don’t worry, the kids in Misfits got a good helping of powers each.  My favourite, regardless of power, was Kelly played by Lauren Socha.  At one point she was all over TV and I can’t fathom why this hasn’t continued.  Her voice had a quality to me that was pure entertainment and I just wanted her to say every line.  I’d have taken Misfits as a one-woman show if I’m honest.  Nathan Stewart-Jarrett (Curtis) appeared in a few things afterward, based on the strong vest-wearing he did in the show.  He once came to a party I was forced to attend as part of a work campaign (Primal Scream were playing but I just wanted to go home as I had no idea who they were) and I saw him in our VIP area.  “Yeah,” I thought, “there’s that man off the telly.”  Robert Sheehan provided impish charm with a hearty overegging of every scene as the very annoying Nathan.  He later appeared in Fortitude, which remains my least read blog (so click on it), and showed quite a different side to himself (and his private parts).  On the whole, though, everyone did a fantastic job in their parts.  Well done.  But some of those jobs got so over the top that I didn’t stick with things all the way to 2013’s fifth series.  It was the arrival of Rudy, played by Joseph Gilgun, in season three that started to wear me out.  I don’t like it when actors’ enjoyment of their own performances visibly outweighs the believability of their own performance.  You don’t see me at my office desk having a great time.

What made things really work was the gritty British urban setting of the whole thing.  Concrete wasteland is somehow a very plausible place for some inclement weather to dish out superhuman abilities.  But the greatest element of its own realism came from Misfits’ use of irreverent humour.  Sure coping with time-rewinding power and telepathy was deep stuff, but it also led to some LOLs.  This is why traditional hero fare always loses me.  At some point, our protagonist dons some sort of skin-tight outfit and begins posturing about the place as if we can take them seriously now they’ve got a uniform and a generic moniker that indicates their power.  I always think of Bananaman.  And I always hated him for being patronising.  The Misfits’ powers were buyable - probably just manifestations of the things we have about ourselves that make us think we are different to everyone.  I’ll confess here to my own hero creation: Bubble Boy.  Don’t worry; I didn’t think of the name.  My niece came up with that.  As an adult, imagination play is incredibly embarrassing.  I can spend hours building LEGO or playing board games with my sister’s daughter, but anything involving pretending goes beyond my comfort zone.  I was obliged to spend half the summer in the garden with her enacting superhero battles.  She was something to do with a ladybird.  Each battle starts with your pose.  It can be holding aloft a weapon or assuming some sort of proactive position.  Bubble Boy, whose name isn’t actually linked to any of my own digestive problems, draws a bubble with his hands.  Because, yes, he has the awesome power of bubbles.  Be afraid.  Don’t worry, I don’t proceed to assault a ten-year-old girl, as we are normally too busy laughing at our own posing to unleash any real violence.  Which just goes to show we British can’t take anything seriously.  I mean, just look at Brexit.

But if you want silly camp costumes, then Strictly Come Dancing is on every year.  Otherwise, dig out the old Misfits boxset for a masterclass in good British telly.  Nobody stands on a rooftop in Lycra with their hands on their hips.  They scowl while wearing dirty jumpsuits, before making some sort of quip about the whole situation.  The next time you see some disaffected youths, don’t forget that they might just have some superpowers you just don’t know about.