Currently Watching #2
Daisy May Cooper!
Hello, friends,
I hope your week is going well.
I work late on Tuesdays, so it’s the one day a week where Josh & I watch things separately—I usually watch a movie before work, and he usually watches a Star War or something else with at least a smidge of sci-fi flavor before I get home.
This week was different: I watched two pilots, both starring Daisy May Cooper, and loved them both so much that I IMMEDIATELY texted Josh at work to Gently Pressure him to watch them that night so that we could continue them both together.
And because Daisy May Cooper—co-creator of the BRILLIANT-but-not-currently-streaming-This-Country* and chaos agent/contestant on Series 10 of Taskmaster—is a Household Favorite, he did and ALSO loved them, so we’ll ABSOLUTELY be watching both shows going forward.
*Curse you, Hulu, I’ll never forgive you for dropping it.
Based on the pilots, the shows are tonally extremely different—on the surface, even the color palettes of the posters above tell you what you need to know. Both pilots have moments of absolute hilarity and moments of complete devastation, both do a great job of introducing us to these new characters without feeling like they’re just going through the WELP, THIS IS A PILOT motions, and both showcase Daisy May Cooper paired with outstanding child actors, but Rain Dogs is definitely the heavier of the two.
In which Daisy May plays Costello Jones, 99 days sober and the struggling single mother of Iris—the show opens with the two of them getting evicted first thing in the morning. I knew I was in love right from that first scene—Iris opens up her backpack so Costello can pop their electronics in, she says something along the lines of, “Put ‘em in here; they can’t touch me” in such a matter-of-fact way that it was clear they’d been through this before. This is such a known situation for them that Costello gets Iris to school on time, even, and promises that they’ll have a place to stay by the end of the day.
We’re also introduced to Selby, who is being released from prison after a year. Over the course of the episode, we get a little bit of the history between the three—Costello wants nothing to do with Selby, whose name in her phone is SELBY — DO NOT ANSWER—but it’s clear that the connections and love run deep, if complicated.
If you’re already watching this one, let me know—there is so much just about the first episode that I’d love to talk about. It’s wonderfully done and there was a moment that hit me square in the chest and made me cry. Which is a rarity in a pilot, holy cow.
Am I Being Unreasonable? (Hulu)
In this one, Daisy May is Nic, a woman who adores her son, Ollie, but is unfulfilled in her marriage—in part because she’s married to Julian from Stath Lets Flats* (okay, that’s probably My Stuff, because after doing such a brilliant job of playing that twerp, that poor actor will forever be Julian to me), and in part she is clearly secretly still grieving the loss of another man.
She’s bored and lonely UNTIL she forms an instant connection with a new mom at Ollie’s school… but by the end of the episode it’s clear—to us—that the other mom has Some Sort of Agenda. I had to FORCE myself to stop watching, it’s a great hook.
*Stath Lets Flats is BRILLIANT, even just thinking about it makes me want to watch the whole thing all over again. If you were a fan of the British Office but can’t handle Ricky Gervais anymore, it’ll scratch a similar itch, BUT it has way more warmth and heart. Truly wonderful.
Previously: SPADER SPADER SPADER
See you tomorrow for the fifth installment of Prom Dress!
Oh! And so I guess Substack is launching its own Twitter-ish thing? Good timing, I guess, since I deactivated my Twitter last month. See you over there?
Leila