‘The show is gleefully unpalatable and blindingly funny with an unrivalled joke count and I’d recommend it to anyone’

When Such Brave Girls debuted, I was struck by lightning. For a year afterwards, it was my first answer whenever anyone asked me if I’d “seen anything good lately”.

Kat Sadler’s witty, ruthlessly cutting sitcom moves a mile-a-minute, and every one of those minutes is chock-a-block full of punchlines. The second series packs even more jokes than the first, coaxing laughs from the darkest of subjects, which include, but are not limited to, abortions, sectioning, parental estrangement, suicide, and several extra-marital affairs.

I love Sadler’s refreshing take on mental health and hidden poverty. Instead of girlbossifying #mentalhealth and writing lines that could be on a millennial’s cushion, she has written woeful, ruthless and, quite frankly, feral (if not dangerous) women holding their lives together by the skin of their teeth. The core trio of sisters Josie and Billie and formidable mother Deb are deeply unlikeable, untrustworthy people, that I found myself rooting for at every turn.

I commend Sadler for tackling closeted lesbianism and compulsory heterosexuality without relying on all the classic coming out story tropes, and in more ways than one too (looking at you, Billie). I took particular joy in the show’s skewering of pathetic, wet-wipe men in charisma-vacuum Seb, the professionally incompetent Dev, and the new addition to the sorry bunch: self-pitying cheater Graham.

The show is gleefully unpalatable and blindingly funny with an unrivalled joke count and I’d recommend it to anyone. If you don’t love it, you’re wrong.

STREAMING SHOW OF THE YEAR

Severance, Apple TV

I’m not sure I have all the words to describe Ben Stiller’s sci-fi thriller, let alone neatly and pithily explain why I love it (brevity is not my speciality), but every episode of this show has me enrapt.

Severance

The enigmatic world of Severance is uncannily and unsettlingly neat. The artistry of it all is impressive – every shot meticulously perfected, colours carefully chosen, never a word, a line, an expression out of place. From the first to last shot of the series, you feel like a stylish 5000-piece jigsaw puzzle is being completed in front of you (this mainly applies if you’re bad at puzzles and are impressed by people who are good at them).

And instead of spinning further away from what made series one so accomplished, like many follow-ups do, the second run grinds its heels in.

The story gets stranger, more intricate, expands larger, and yet digs deeper into the questions at the heart of the show about the nature of self, collective responsibility, late-stage capitalism, corporate wrongdoing and duty of care, and that age-old sci-fi adage “we can, but does that mean we should?”

I’m a sucker for a good love story too and Mark’s romances ground the whole mystifying affair as you tear your hair out wondering what choice he will make – escape with his thought-to-be-dead wife or stay trapped in hell with new love Helly.

The whole thing is weird and wonderful, satisfyingly substantial, and relentlessly gripping. I’m counting down the days till series three.

 Top five UK broadcaster shows  Top five streamer shows
1 Such Brave Girls, Various Artists Limited, A24 for BBC3   1 Severance S2, Apple TV
2 Virgin Island, Double Act for Channel 4   2 The Studio, Apple TV
3 Dreaming Whilst Black, Big Deal Films, A24 for BBC3   3 Yellowjackets S3, Paramount+
4 Amandaland, Merman for BBC1   4 LOL: Last One Laughing UK, Initial and Zeppotron for Amazon Prime Video
5 The Celebrity Traitors, Studio Lambert for BBC1   5 Wayward, Objective Fiction for Netflix

Fleur Feeney

  • Fleur Feeney, senior content researcher, Broadcast Intelligence

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