Aimee Lou Wood and David Morrissey star in this winning BBC series about a pregnant party girl forced to flat share with her man-child dad David Morrissey and Aimee Lou Wood in 'Daddy Issues'. Photo: BBC/Fudge Park Productions David Morrissey and Sharon Rooney in 'Daddy Issues'. Photo: BBC/Fudge Park Productions Let the joy be unconfined.
Daddy Issues (BBC3, Thursday, August 15) is that increasingly rare and precious thing: a British comedy that actually makes you laugh. Not smile or snicker or chuckle but laugh, and laugh hard. It makes for a refreshing change.
Frankly, I’m fed up to the back teeth of hearing comedies being described as “gentle”, “whimsical”, “charming”, “subtle” or any other adjective that’s really a euphemism for “not very funny”. “Sweet”, on the other hand, gets a pass. Daddy Issues, written by Danielle Ward ( Brassic ), is often sweet but it’s also savagely funny.
Aimee Lou Wood from Sex Education, a series that’s become a kind of feeder factory producing bright young stars on the up, sparkles as 24-year-old Gemma, a hedonistic Stockport girl who’s spent the summer abroad, careening between wild parties and random hook-ups with men. When we meet her, she’s just joined the mile-high club with a guy called Ben, who only introduces himself after they’ve had sex in the plane’s tiny bathroom. Neither is carrying a condom, but they take a chance anyway.
Back home two months later, Gemma, who works in a hair salon, learns she’s pregnant. Once she recovers from the initial shock and decides to keep the baby, she’s dealt another blow when her flatmate tells her she’s moving out and leaving the country. The interviews with potential new flatmates don’t go well.
One is a creepy young would-be comedian who tells her he’s a feminist and asks if she locks her door at night. Another is a creepy old ex-convict who did a long stretch for being in the Baader–Meinhof gang. “Nobody remembers,” he laments, when Gemma tells him she’s never heard of it, before offering to “pleasure” her once a week in exchange for a reduction in the rent.
The final one is a middle-aged conspiracy theorist, who asks Gemma if she would mind her hosting meetings in the flat once she finally exposes the paedophile ring operating in parliament. Unable to afford the rent alone, Gemma doesn’t exactly have many people she can turn to. Her sister Catherine (the always excellent Sharon Rooney), who is a bit of a sociopath, is in prison on remand, having hired a hitman to push her boyfriend off a fire escape so she could claim on the life insurance policy.
David Morrissey and Sharon Rooney in 'Daddy Issues'. Photo: BBC/Fudge Park Productions Her parents, Davina (Susan Lynch, seen only in a video call) and Malcolm (David Morrissey), are divorced. Davina is off doing the whole ‘ Eat Pray Love thing’ around the world.
Before she left, she made sure to clean out their joint bank account and hand the car back to the finance company. That just leaves Malcolm. This is unfortunate for Gemma, since Malcolm is useless: a hopeless man-child who can’t sort out his own life, let alone help his daughter sort out hers, as he struggles with the most basic tasks.
He doesn’t know how to load a washing machine. Whenever he tries to cook rice in the microwave, the bag explodes. He thinks jacket potatoes are “special potatoes” that come pre-covered in a leather-like substance.
Malcolm is useless: a hopeless man-child who can’t sort out his own life, let alone help his daughter sort out hers, as he struggles with the most basic tasks. Malcolm shares a filthy house with five other men, including the landlord Derek (David Fynn), a seething misogynist lunatic who tries to hit on Gemma the moment he sees her and goes nuts when she rebuffs him. When Malcolm delicately suggests they clean the bathroom, which is basically a bacteria lab with a shower curtain, he rants: “That bathroom is a shrine to us having broken free from the shackles of women!” Malcolm uses jam jars as cups.
When Gemma tells him this is quite trendy now, he asks: “Is it trendy to have a wee in them an’ all?” (he keeps aside one marked with an ‘X’ for that very purpose). Faced with the prospect of homelessness if she doesn’t find someone to share the rent, Gemma takes the nuclear option: she asks Malcolm to move in with her. For all its deliberate silliness, Daddy Issues stays just the right side of believable, and the characters of Gemma and Malcolm are immensely likeable.
It helps that the chemistry between Wood and Morrissey, who’s terrific in a rare comedy role, is marvellous. Poor Malcolm might be a bit of a loser, but Daddy Issues is a definite winner. Join the Irish Independent WhatsApp channel Stay up to date with all the latest news.
