I don’t know about you but I always dread watching the pilot episode of something, especially a comedy. There’s just so much to set up – and so often that setting up is done with all the subtlety of someone shouting “Wake up!” at a coma patient.
We see the main character has been asleep on the sofa: their life is a mess. They go into a scene and someone strictly barks, “[SURNAME OF MAIN CHARACTER THAT THEY HAVE NO OTHER OPPORTUNITY TO EVER INTRODUCE], you’re late!”, so that must mean it’s their boss. Try-too-hard weird banter with someone eating cereal standing up normally means they have a flatmate. Try-too-hard banter with someone else? That normally means best friend. What about a scene where they order coffee and the barista wants them to use different words for coffee than they normally use and it turns into a whole altercation? That means they are ornery (“Just a normal coffee. Black. Thank you”).
You’ve got to introduce at least one parent, and decide if they love them too much or if they’re mean. A surprise party. A silly costume. I’m shuddering just thinking about someone actually saying the line “Hey sis”. The actors don’t really know what they’re doing because they haven’t got a handle on their characters yet and as a result they always do at least one line-read in a way that’s just far too kooky. Honestly, comedy pilots revolt me.
Anyway. Good news! Nicola Coughlan’s new one, Big Mood, drops this week (10pm, 28 March, Channel 4), and it manages to sidestep all of those issues adroitly. Yes, there’s some best friend banter – It’s a Sin’s Lydia West takes on the classic role of “bestie who has a place of work and doesn’t mind their friend always visiting them there” – but the first episode does so little setting up it’s almost on the edge of being confusing.
Then it immediately dives into a middle-of-a-series-feeling caper, then twists and pivots hard. I don’t know what they teach in schools these days – how to sell perfume on TikTok live? That’s about the only life skill that’s going to be profitable in 10 years’ time – but they should probably show this to any prospective screenwriters to stop them writing a bit where someone is slightly rude to a stranger on the street and then it turns out that’s exactly who they’re having a job interview with two scenes later.
A word on Coughlan, who is very excellent in this – she plays Maggie with big bombastic take-all-the-energy-in-the-room aplomb, until mental health hits (it’s 2024 and it’s a six-episode British comedy with two millennial leads; I don’t think I need to tell you that mental health is a theme here) and then she turns, playing grey and small and slithering with just as much skill. It’s nice to see the Derry Girls up to something – Louisa Harland’s Renegade Nell also launches this week, while you’ve got Siobhán McSweeney in the new series of Extraordinary – and the Bridgerton alumnus really suits writer-creator Camilla Whitehill’s voice here (the two worked together previously on the podcast Whistle Through the Shamrocks).
There are a number of lines in the first episode that made me laugh out loud – at home, alone, with my headphones on – based just on her delivery. (It won’t make as much sense written down but one of them was: “He kept looking at me … with his eyes.” You’ve really got to see it for yourself.) Sometimes comedies forget to be line-to-line funny in the eternal search for a weird new twist on a B-plot, but Big Mood doesn’t.
Besides that, it’s the usual fare – a number of east London locations that, if you’re me, you can’t help but geolocate precisely while an actually important scene is happening, a couple of parties-gone-wrong and speeches-gone-wrong but actually done well, some fantastic British comedy talent playing friends-who-wear-vests-under-short-sleeved-shirts (Amalia Vitale, Robert Gilbert) and the always excellent Sally Phillips doing some great Sally Phillipsing.
You wonder how many shows about two best friends who might fall out due to the behaviour of one or both of the best friends you can really watch in your lifetime – what do you mean they’re drifting apart? What do you mean one of them has a secret they can’t or won’t share? – but, based on the first episode alone and the other three I watched very quickly after that, Big Mood is a welcome addition to the canon.
