Am I Being Unreasonable? is like Absolutely Fabul-- Oh, wait, no it isn't... WHAT AM I WATCHING???

Books, comics, TV, music
1

A newish, British, 6 episode comedy thing:

is now available on Hulu and the BBC. I adored it; it starts off as a comedy of middle-aged British ladies behaving badly, and then quickly branches out in a dozen different twisty directions while still remaining hilarious. At various times it reminded me of Absolutely Fabulous, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Wodehouse, and Murdoch. The actors are great, and the writing is brilliant. I don’t want to say too much more about the show for fear of spoiling its charms, but if you have 3 hours to spare to watch it, and then another 3 hours to watch it again, I’d highly recommend it.

2

Thanks for the recommendation! I thought I’d put the first episode on as something light during a workout, and promptly binged the entire thing. I’m pressuring my wife to watch it tonight so I can try and connect some dots on a rewatch. This show goes way harder than I expected from the opening.

3

I finished this tonight after going in blind based on this thread. My wife didn’t care for it – calling it a “comedy” might have skewed her expectations – but I thoroughly enjoyed it and can feel the pull to watch it again.

There’s apparently a second season due this year. Very intriguing!

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I am intrigued, and especially appreciative of how cagey you’re being to avoid spoiling anything, but I have one question: “DMC comedy”?

5

The comparison to Absolutely Fabulous in the OP made sure I’ll never watch it. I watched all the episodes of that show, in the hopes that I would laugh. I did not laugh. But the Pet Shop Boys had done a song, so I had to watch it!

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Sorry, that was just me trying to be cute, DMC = Daisy May Cooper. She’s the writer and one of the leads of the show, and apparently she has a minor media empire over in Britain.

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Oh, she’s the woman from Witchfinder, a series I know with Tim Key, who I know from Steve Coogan’s latest Alan Partridge joint! She was so much fun in Witchfinder, opposite Key as a sadsack witchfinder in Medieval England! I’m delighted that she’s doing well enough to be known as a set of initials, and I’m excited to see where Am I Being Unreasonable goes. Right off the bat, I love how dark and irreverent it is, and I especially love the scenes with her son, Ollie.

Thanks so much for starting this thread, @RothdaTheTruculent! One ep down and five to go!

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Well, that was not what I expected!

The early Absolutely Fabulous vibe is a great misdirect. @RothdaTheTruculent, I like your attempts to describe it, which is hard to do, isn’t it? How to you sell this? The above trailer does a decent job, but as usual has too many spoilers. I guess I’d just describe it as a social paranoia thriller in the tone of a brash horror comedy that manages a surprising number of fundamental narrative twists in a very short period of time. One of those densely packed esoteric British thrillers that’s too good for American audiences.

No kidding. Although I thought it did an admirable job of unpacking itself as necessary. But it’s dense enough that I’m sure it holds up for a rewatch. Even if just for the performances.

And I love that it’s the creation of the two female leads. They were both just perfect for the story’s shifting sympathies and perspectives. It’s the sort of stuff they they clearly wrote for themselves, and it shows. However, the kid who played Ollie, an actor with dwarfism named Lenny Rush, nearly stole the show. He was tremendous, especially for his age. His ability to connect with the adult actors, and then to go where the show took him, was impressive.

As for where Am I Being Unreasonable? ends up, oh my god, it couldn’t have been more perfect!

Aww, nooooo! Dammit, this is like Fleabag all over again. Except from before I actually watched the second season of Fleabag and realized how good it was. So I guess this is nothing like Fleabag all over again. Unless I’m extremely lucky.

Still, I thought the ending of season one of Am I Being Unreasonable? got the characters exactly as far as they needed to go for me to know all I needed to know about them. And at that point, I’m happy to be done with them. I don’t mean that in a mean way, just in that the point of Am I Being Unreasonable? was to turn a short-and-sweet narrative brutally inside out, putting the characters in a completely different place than when you first meet them. And given how uniformly horrible and unreliable they all turn out to be, isn’t that the point? Aren’t we now done with them?

Again, I’m back at the first time I realized there was a second season of Fleabag: arguing that this nearly perfect thing is going to be ruint if the storytellers have more to say. :)

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Yeah, it’s sort of the paradox of recommending a story. You want to describe and sell the story, but by talking about the story you spoil the charm of discovery for the next person. You want to praise the story, but by praising the story you raise the next person’s expectations, where really you want them to go in with moderate expectations and then be delighted when those expectations are surpassed. The ideal situation would be a sort of secret media society that would make DVDs of worthy works and then leave them around cafes and bus stops for people to appreciate completely fresh, and untarnished by trailers, spoilers, discussion, and expectations.

I know. We Americans are doomed to be force fed $100 million dollar dreck movies until the end of time, while the British just get to keep enjoying great actors + smart scripts. At least we will always have better pizza than them.

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Preach it, brother!

And thanks again for putting this so discreetly in front of me and others. I simply can’t get it out of my head! Would you mind if I changed the subject header to try to lure more folks in? I’m worried the “DMC” isn’t doing the necessary lifting. :)

11

Lenny Rush is on the last series of Taskmaster, he was absolutely brilliant on that, very very funny…

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Sure sure, feel free to do whatever editing you want to the title/OP.

13

The Qt3 Movie Podcast has cheated: