This Way Up
Created, written by and starring the prodigiously talented Irish comedian, actor and writer Aisling Bea, this brilliant series combines comedy with affecting drama to stunning effect.
Bea plays Aine, a young Irish woman living in London who is recovering from what she refers to as “a teeny little nervous breakdown”. She teaches English as a foreign language, is much loved by her students and has a close relationship with her older sister Shona (Sharon Horgan), a successful career woman working in the financial sector. Aine is warm, funny, extrovert, empathetic and struggles with her mental health – it eventually transpires that she actually tried to take her own life, which led to a period in a psychiatric facility.
Slowly building up her resilience,
Aine gets a huge amount of support from Shona and Shona’s partner Vish (Aasif Mandvi). When she takes on young private French student Etienne who has recently lost his mother, she finds herself drawn to his quiet, slightly repressed father Richard (Tobias Menzies), whose life has been upturned by becoming legal guardian to the teenage son he has rarely seen. The tentative relationship between Aine and Richard is delicately drawn and the two actors play it beautifully.
The writing perfectly captures the complexity of a fiercely loving sibling relationship – wisecracks one minute, jibes the next – and the performances from Bea and Horgan are just sublime.