Twenty minutes? That'll take me ages!

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's Top 50 TV Shows of 2021.  

#17 : This Way Up

Like Back to Life (spoiler alert for #18), the second series of Aisling Bea’s This Way Up improved on its first. This time, as well as focusing on the recovery of Bea’s character Aine, the show was also bold enough to tackle Covid as a storyline. The fact that it was almost entirely alone in making the subject work with this little distance makes it doubly worthy of praise.

This is an odd one - I watched season 1 of this and really enjoyed it.  Aisling Bea and Sharon Horgan teamed up really well to make a touching and believable portrayal of flawed characters (one of whom happened to have mental health issues), so I was really looking forward to season 2.  Which I watched the first two episodes of it and then just forgot about it.  Why would I do that? What's wrong with me?!?  So let's just start again, shall we?

Hmmm - having rewatched those episodes again, I think it's the glimmer of hope that affected me.  Aine (Aisling Bea) was really quite broken for most of the first season but she seemed to accept her broken-ness and others were happy to help her and there were signs of some sort of accidental recovery towards the end.  And in the first episodes of the second season, you feel like she's trying to get better and others are getting messed up - and if it goes all horribly wrong for her, then I'm afraid that just won't be OK with me.  And so I ran away, rather than being disappointed.  Which is obviously the mature way to address such concerns, isn't it?

But there's no avoiding the issue now, is there?  Actually, it was fine - things don't fall apart, although I'd struggle to say it sticks to happy subjects, covering Grenfell, Covid, fractured relationships and suicide throughout the season.  The Covid thing is interesting because about halfway through you realise that a load of conversations are happening over video calls or under socially distanced conditions - but not all of them, which seems odd.   Some of the storylines do feel a little disconnected, which did make me wonder about the effect of Covid on filming but it does also manage to fit it into the plot quite well.  Generally this season continues in pretty much the same vein as season 1 although it does spread the broken-ness around the characters a bit more which actually feels more true to life.  And episode 4 features the c word twice - you don't see that often in sitcoms!

The season also has a cracker of an ending which I didn't see coming at all - a wholly believable turn of events introduced as closure in one scene, but very deftly converted into a whole new avenue of uncertainty in another one.  It then closes with a nice dedication - "Written for anyone who needs a reminder to find hope", which seems somewhat ironic given the potential dashing of hope which has immediately preceded it.

It's Aisling Bea's show and she puts in a very delicate nuanced performance - a nice mix of brittle and open.  She's particularly well supported by Sharon Horgan (who is also brittle and open, but in a different way) and Tobias Menzies, both of whom she has complicated relationships with.  The whole cast does the job admirably though (and certainly doesn't worry too much about embarrassing themselves) - the whole thing is written really well and manages to switch moods very deftly (and often unexpectedly).  It was also nice to see Lorraine Ashbourne (Mrs Andy Serkis, apparently) popping up for the second time on this list (after Alma's Not Normal).  Sorcha Cusack is also great as Mammy - I might have heard some similar conversations between Irish mother and daughter in my time.

Overall, I really enjoyed this season - you do need to watch season one first, but I think they're both good uses of your time.  It's all really well written and acted - "nuanced" is a good description of the whole thing and it mines difficult situations well for subtle comedy, sometimes surprising you with a swift change of direction that you're not expecting.  And, fortunately, I didn't find season two overly distressing - because I couldn't have handled it, I tell you.

#16 - Enjoyably confusing
#18 - Enjoyably odd