Watch TV with Paul Flynn
Somewhere towards the end of the first season of Gameface, I became properly obsessed with Roisin Conaty, a comedian with the exact potential everywoman appeal of Adele. She’s demonstrably working class, funny AF and knows how to tell a story with smart, dry, relatable detailing. Her profile was upped massively after playing the straight-talking sex worker in Ricky Gervais’s Afterlife. But Gameface, in which she manages to turn a page on screen singledom, is her star turn.
Marcella Donahue (Conaty) is a failing actor in her thirties with a recovering coke addict brother and an Irish mum who saves most of her matriarchal instinct for her gay cat, Orlando. Her tale will resonate with anyone who didn’t marry the guy they thought they would while wafting through their twenties. Or did, then regretted it.
Marcella’s ex of 12 years – called Simon, lending the whole Adele thing a retrospectively prescient flavour – got married in Vegas on the rebound to a woman who fits exactly Marcella’s model (someone like you!). ‘I am the mess that mess makes,’ Marcella tells her life coach during one of their exquisitely cringeworthy sessions. She falls for her driving instructor, John, who is lovely, has perfect facial hair and is clearly quietly crackers for her. The question Conaty allows Marcella to ask herself, without ever voicing it, is whether she wants to go through the whole rigmarole again. She is doubtful, not brittle or broken. It’s up to her. truly, we’ve moved a long way since Bridget Jones in this honest revision of the 21st-century mating game.
In the brother/sister relationship, Marcella’s the capable one. with Simon, Marcella clarifies the awkwardness. Her attraction to John is wrapped up in his pliable beta nature. with sex, she has a natural human caution you rarely see on tv. Sometimes, she’s just drop dead, Victoria wood-levels funny, like the episode in which she explains her break-up from Simon by way of an argument over an onion, a set piece anyone who’s weathered their own seven-year itch will recognise with pinpoint precision.
Because it is a show built on a framework of gorgeous, frank hesitancy, you can go straight into Gameface season two without having to do much catching up on plot. Honestly, though? Give yourself a treat and revise the whole of season one on All4 first. I absolutely adore this show. Wednesday, 10pm, Channel 4