IS IT BOLLOCKS?
THE JOY OF COMEDIAN MAE MARTIN’S NEW SITCOM FEEL GOOD…
Could Indy swim away from a submerging sub?
Blackpool beach feels like an incongruous spot to find a Canadian stand-up, a British TV actor and an icon of US situation comedy hanging out. But somehow Channel 4’s new six-part sadcom Feel Good just makes sense. The brainchild of comedian Mae Martin and writing partner Joe Hampson (Skins), it’s the semi-autobiographical story of recovering addict and struggling stand-up Mae (Martin) and lost soul George (Fresh Meat’s Charlotte Ritchie). Both are plagued by insecurities, with George a child of divorce and on the periphery of a friendship group with whom she has increasingly little in common. Mae, meanwhile, is a recovering addict with an overbearing but distant mother and wide-open heart.
The meet-cute comes at one of Mae’s gigs. The attraction is mutual and instant, but both are holding back: Mae won’t discuss her addictions and George refuses to introduce her first girlfriend to her awful pals. Small Screen watches as Mae and George have a boozy heart-to-heart in a beach hut. It’s powerfully intimate, very touching and often swooningly romantic, but avoids getting navel-gazey thanks to humour that both undercuts and bolsters the raw emotion in play.
“It’s been a four-year project, so it’s beyond thrilling that everyone
will finally get to see it,” says Martin, blinking into the sunlight as she emerges from the hut. “I’ve been writing pilots that never went anywhere for years, and I’m really glad none of them got commissioned because I wasn’t ready then. They were full of so many fart jokes. This opportunity came along at a time when I really felt like I knew myself and the type of story I wanted to tell. The character Mae is a lot more manic, a lot more unhinged, and a lot less selfaware [than me]... She’s sort of where I was at about 10 years ago, I think.”
“When Mae first asked me to help, she knew she wanted it to be about the difficulties she’s experienced with various relationships,” recalls Hampson. “It was taking her standup material relating to gender and sexuality, the labels we put on ourselves and others, and putting them into the narrative. We didn’t want it to seem like ‘just’ a queer show. It’s a show about people in love.”
SERIOUSLY FUNNY
Ritchie, a long-time friend of Martin and Hampson, is delighted to be involved. “The show is about what we’re searching for to make us feel good and how healthy that pursuit is: you could say that Mae is trying to replace addiction with a really dramatic relationship. But also, my favourite thing is saying a completely ridiculous line, deadly seriously – I get to do that a lot here. That kind of charged emotion in the context of comedy can be hard. But I love it.”