Bold female comedy that’s like Sex and the City
Women on the Verge (W), a new comedy from Sharon Horgan and Lorna Martin, set out its stall from the word go: an extended, awkward opening sex scene in a pub toilet was swiftly followed by a cringeworthy artificial insemination. Viewers of a sensitive disposition were being advised to look away now: this was warts-and-all comedy, with a focus on the warts.
The set-up, however, was nothing so bold – three middle-class female friends in their mid-thirties trying and variously failing to cope with life and love. It was Sex and the City in a different city – Dublin as it happened – drinking too much wine and then doing stuff they’d later regret.
It all smacked of TV precision-made for a specific demographic, that being female, 35, probably Grazia readers (the series came from a column in that magazine) wanting the solace of seeing characters they can relate too being brutally honest about babies, the biological clock, younger bloody women and useless feckin’ men. There’s nothing wrong with TV spawned by focus group (you could say Netflix is one giant focus group) and undoubtedly we need more female voices on television, both as writers and characters. But it so happens that the best two female comedy writers on television at the moment are Sharon Horgan and Phoebe Waller-bridge and their tone – unabashed, unafraid, unrepentant – has quickly become what new female comedy sounds like. If you’ve seen Pulling or Catastrophe, Crashing, Motherland, Fleabag or Divorce, you’ll have found Women on the Verge a little samey.
Comedy suffers most from hasty judgements and so we should look for positives. Kerry Condon, Nina Sosanya and Eileen Walsh shared an ease that is one of the hardest things to fake on screen. Their chat, with occasional sorties into filth, at least sounded true.
Horgan and Martin’s challenge is going to be to keep getting the women together in scenarios other than just over a bottle or three of mummy juice at some imaginary weekly dinner. Otherwise Women on the Verge runs the risk of toppling over the edge – into cliché.
Women on the Verge ★★★