"This too shall pass. Probably. Well, hopefully. Sometimes it doesn't though, does it? It just gets worse" - Janice, Miri Matteson's parole officer.
When Back to Life first aired on BBC3 in 2019 I didn't watch it. I didn't even know it was on. Primarily because it was on BBC3 and experience has taught me that, with one hugely notable exception, very little of value appears on that channel. I don't even look at the TV listings for it. But a good review for series two (which has just begun and which I will catch up with soon) had me delving deep into the iPlayer for a catch up and it was a catch up that I was glad I partook in.
If Laura Solon and Daisy Haggard's show (directed by Christopher Sweeney) wasn't quite as funny as it seemed to think it was in places, each episode contained a smattering of genuine lols and as the series progressed the number of these increased. As did the story and the darkness that underpinned it from the start.
By the final episode I was finding Back to Life to be genuinely hilarious and surprisingly dramatic while packing quite an impressive twist. It culminated in a brilliantly written, and executed, set piece at an emergency general meeting of Hythe townsfolk which touched on themes of arson, infidelity, murder, chlamydia, and parking spaces on Dixon Street in the Kent town.
By the time Arctic Lake's cover of The Cocteau Twins Cherry Coloured Funk was playing out over the closing titles I was feeling far more emotional than I had expected to be. Which is not what you'd expect from a comedy that has no shame in mining schoolyard levels of puerile humour. Wanking, tits, fingering, moist labia, and hungry fannies are all deployed to deliciously sniggersome effect.
The story begins with Miri Matteson (Daisy Haggard) being released from prison after serving eighteen years for murder. Her parents, Caroline (Geraldine James) and Oscar (Richard Durden), are there to meet her and, once they've had a quick selfie (!), she's taken back to her teenage bedroom in their home on the Kentish coast.
Her bedroom walls are adorned with posters of David Bowie, Prince, and George Michael (all, of course, taken by the Grim Reaper during his infamous 2016 cull of the great and good) as well as, less impressively, Jamie Oliver ("the last man standing" - Caroline). Coming from a time before smartphones, LinkedIn, and 5G, Miri struggles to find work and get her life back on track.
Which is not made any easier by her reputation in the town. She receives abusive phone calls, gets a brick lobbed through the window, has PSYCHO BITCH sprayed on her fence, and takes custody of a large box of shit through the post ("lovingly home boxed faeces" - Miri). Chip shop owner Nathan (Liam Williams), at least, gives her a second chance but business is slow anyway, and slower still when a murderer is dishing up the haddock and plaice.
Attempts to reinvigorate Miri's love life are even more difficult. Pre-prison boyfriend Dom (Jamie Michie) is now married with his twins although taking time out to perform oral sex, unbeknownst to Miri, on Caroline in the back of a car. So her heart turns to shy neighbour Billy (Adeel Akhtar). Billy's scared of giraffes but seems gentle and kind and the ice creams that he shares with Miri feel romantic even if there is no physical element to their relationship.
Friendships, too, aren't easy for Miri. Former best friend, and now head teacher at their former school, Mandy (Christine Bottomley) hasn't changed much since she was voted the girl "most likely to get fingered in science" at school but her friendship with Miri has grown frosty following the incarceration. The murder victim, and former friend of both Miri and Mandy, Lara (Imogen Gurney) also haunts her.
Lara crops up in the most improbable places but so too does incompetent, self-appointed, investigative journalist Samuel (Frank Feys) whose dictaphone led expositions feel a little surplus to the already dense plot. They add little and a brief look at Wikipedia reveals to me that Samuel was dropped as a character for the second series.
He doesn't ruin it - but he adds little or nothing and feels both extraneous and unnecessary. As does Rhona Cameron's cameo as a receptionist. Juliet Cowan's role as Tina, an incompetent and inferiority complex ridden, police officer is better and as so is Souad Adel Faress as Anna, the foul mouthed woman that Billy shares his home, and possibly life, with.
Perhaps best of all, along with Haggard, James, and Durden who are all excellent, is Jo Martin as Miri's probation officer Janice. Seemingly more interested in the quality of biscuits and cakes at their meetings than Miri's life, and always eager to unprofessionally gossip out loud, Janice is a fantastic comic creation and it is to Martin's credit that her levity doesn't undermine the darker, more dramatic, elements of Back to Life but, instead, complements them.
I chuckled when Dom tried to tempt Miri to The Holiday Inn for some afternoon sex with the promise of free WiFi ("you know what WiFi is?"), and I guffawed when Miri, caught with a handful of condoms, told Billy (who'd been perusing two-for-one calculators) that she was buying five packets of Durex for her parents.
I laughed equally hard when Caroline told her daughter that Oscar was unable to obtain an erection and Miri thought she was still talking about The Tiger Who Came To Tea and I tittered when there was confssion between The Hungry Caterpillar and The Human Centipede. These jokes were all good but, better than that, they worked well in a situation comedy that was equally as devoted to the sit as it was the com. I'm looking forward to the second series and am hoping that Miri and Billy get to share more than an ice cream together this time.
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