It Gets Worse; Last One Laughing: Halloween

“There have been times when many of us have had good reason to worry about the state of Channel 4 comedy. Had the erstwhile home of Father Ted, Black Books, Spaced and Brass Eye grown a little too timid, a little too stale in recent years? Had it become cowed by a fear of offending its target Gen Z audience? Wasn’t this audience precisely the one ripe for being skewered? Well, thank the comedy gods that Leo Reich has come along with It Gets Worse. Suddenly it seems as if things have got a lot better. Reich’s rude, filthy, fantastically self-flagellating takedown of self-important twentysomething life feels (at least to these middle-aged eyes) revelatory and hilarious, unsparing but oddly compassionate. I absolutely love it.”
Ben Dowell, The Times

“In a 2015 episode of Lena Dunham’s Girls, a flustered Shoshanna stropped into a New York bar to tell her sort-of friends Marnie and Jessa about her nightmare week trying to find a job. “I just don’t understand why nobody tells you how bad it’s gonna be in the real world,” she whined. Marnie, already peeved that no one is taking her terrible attempts at a music career seriously, is having none of it. “Yeah, they do,” she deadpans. “It’s pretty much all they ever tell you.” Channel 4’s It Gets Worse, a fitfully funny Channel 4 sitcom about professional Gen-Z crash-outs, is like that Girls scene but without the Marnie of it all. Instead of reflecting and subverting twentysomething clichés in the same instant – and hilariously, and by incredibly charismatic actors – it just lets them play out. Bad sex is had, shoddy flatshares are lived in, contemporary pop culture references are made. Lena Dunham herself makes a cameo, as if to suggest the passing of a torch. But it’s an unhelpful, and unflattering, comparison. It Gets Worse sometimes feels like a dozen Vogue relationship essays in a trench coat, or a series of loose gripes and observations in search of a TV show.”
Adam White, Independent

“It Gets Worse is truly funny, propelled along by Reich’s zinger-filled, often profound script. The cast are solid, too, not least Vicki Pepperdine as Ethan’s highly-strung mum, plotting a move from the London suburbs to the Kent countryside because “almost everyone we know has been stabbed”. At the end of the second episode, Tom inadvertently calls Ethan a flop, to which he says: “We’re too young to be failures – in 10 years, then we’ll have failed.” In 10 years, Reich will probably be running British television – and, you imagine, breathing a sigh of relief to have his 20s far behind him.”
Hannah J Davies, The Guardian

“Channel 4 must imagine that Gen Z viewers are going to relate to these people, but all I can see is a derivative, aimless mess with delusions of relevance. Since Phoebe Waller-Bridge had an unexpected hit with Fleabag ten years ago, it feels as though every new comedy has looked like this – a bunch of shallow, unlikeable, promiscuous characters, estranged from their families and cobbled together as friends. They’re always broke, and they never stop complaining. Each new series arrives with great fanfare, promising to break the mould of comedy when in fact they’re all identikit flop-and-forget products.”
Christopher Stevens, Daily Mail 

“Last One Laughing: Halloween is just as hilarious as the show’s previous iterations. There’s little chance of this particular comic well running dry – even second-time contestants [Lou] Sanders and the defensively screwfaced [Daisy May] Cooper prove they have plenty more to give. Wang provides the quick wit, [Tom] Allen brings the camp asides (and a ridiculously funny breakdancing interlude), [Harriet] Dyer a touch of surrealism and [Reece] Shearsmith a seemingly never-ending box of gruesome tricks. Ironically, the typically gloomy [Jack] Dee is a delight – the man has never looked so happy to be on TV. And there’s another irony: what was previously the show’s most groan-worthy quality – the lameness of host Jimmy Carr’s script – has been almost completely rectified (credit, perhaps, to the new blood in the writers room).”
Rachel Aroesti, The Guardian

“Those looking for a fright won’t really find anything scary in this Halloween twist on the format – that was never the point – it’s still just simply very, very funny. And that’s fine, because the world is a scary enough place as it is at the moment. This show is an excuse to think about nothing and laugh until our sides hurt. As viewers at home, we can do this all we like, with the restrained comedians in the studio the only ones who aren’t allowed to really let go and enjoy it. As Allen puts it: “It’s all been a lot of fun so far. I wish I could have let my face know.””
Ellie Harrison, Independent