Jonathan is a kind man, Jonathan is an intelligent man, and Jonathan is a caring man - but Jonathan is a weak man. He won't raise his voice, he won't complain if a cafe gets his order wrong, and he's intimidated by pretty much everyone he ever meets - including schoolkids. He won't even admit his relationship is over.
To either himself or his son. It takes a short while to get used to Romesh Ranganathan in the lead role of Avoidance (BBC1/iPlayer, directed by Benjamin Green who created the story with Ranganathan) but not as long as you might think. That's, possibly, because Romesh appears to be playing an exaggerated version of himself. He's acting - but not much.
It really doesn't matter because Avoidance is a good watch You may not end up howling with laughter, rolling on the floor, or involuntarily urinating inside your clothing but you will snigger, titter, and guffaw and you will admire how well observed it all is. There may be a few lines that aren't quite as funny as they think they are but by the end of the series you may find yourself, like me - predictably, in tears.
That crept up on me and I was surprised to find I'd become so emotionally invested in this tale of Jonathan, a speed awareness instructor, being dumped by his long suffering partner Claire (Jessica Knappett) and having to move into his sister's house with his young son Spencer (Kieran Logendra) who he can't face breaking the news to.
Danielle (Mandeep Dhillon), a therapist whose clients include a man addicted to wanking, lives with her forthright wife Claire (Lisa McGrillis) and they're not without a few problems of their own. Danielle wants a baby (or at least a dog) but Claire is not the maternal type. In fact, the only things she seems to like less than babies are dogs - and men.
One man she most definitely, and performatively, does not like is Jonathan whom she considers to be wet and pathetic. Which, to be fair, echoes his own self-assessment. Set in a world of bus station cafes, rainy school playgrounds, and laser quest centres (Horsham, basically) and with a soundtrack that takes in Bright Eyes, Lou Reed's Satellite of Love, and multiple rewinds of Funkadelic's Can You Get To That, Avoidance contains enough funny moments to keep you interested until the dramatic thrust of the story takes over.
There's Jonathan threatening to throw a mug out of a window of his own house, there's the time he confesses to skiving work to eat cheese sandwiches and go on the dance machines at his local arcade, and there's a priceless moment when he asks Spencer if he wants a milkshake for breakfast. When Spencer points out it's only 8am, Jonathan retaliates with "milkshakes don't get healthier later in the day" before retracting the offer.
Though there are a couple of genuinely cringe inducing scenes (intentional ones too), it is Jonathan's relationship with Spencer as well as the one he eventually forges with Courtney (when she helps him look for somewhere to live, ostensibly to get rid of him) that provide the warm heart of this understated drama.
There's a couple of great cameos from Tony Way as Claire's work friend Steve and Tony Jayawardena as Jonathan's clueless boss Keith but the drama belongs to Ranganathan, Logendra, McGrillis, Dhillon, and Knappett who all put in fantastic performances. The whole thing ends up with Spencer having a birthday treat in a zombie themed hotel but these people are not the living dead. They're very much alive. If only Jonathan could find the voice to express that.
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