The Cutprice Guignol

I know, I know, I spend too much time on this blog chatting about niche British sitcoms. But, as a woman of fine Scottish heritage myself, I have to admit – when it comes to comedy, there’s something about this country, you know?

And by this country, of course, I mean This Country, the mockumentary comedy created by and starring Daisy-May and Charlie Cooper. I’ve been hearing about this show for literal years now, but it’s taken me this long to actually sit down and watch it – and yeah, it really does live up to the hype, and then some.

As someone who grew up in a middle-of-nowhere village, This Country is just a series of episodes coming for my throat, and that of anyone who grew up in a small, provincial town in the UK. It’s so specific and yet so universal, even though the Cotswolds setting is far-removed from my Highlands hamlet – it feels as though the whole of Britain just has one small town we all have shares in. Because how else could so much of this be so utterly applicable to what I grew up with? The tea towels with a primary school class printed on it? The dingy playground hangout spots? That one weird guy who lives in the woods? It scratches a very specific itch for me, but beyond that, it’s outrageously well-performed and well-observed, regardless of whether you’re a small-town loser like me or not.

Daisy-May Cooper, as perennial Hard Woman Kerry, might be one of my favourite comic characters of all time, and the absolute slack-jawed nastiness she brings to it is an art, while Charlie Cooper’s neurotic, obsessive Kurtan speaks to my soul in a way I was not prepared for in a comedy of this nature. Ashley McGuire, as relentlessly terrifying town maniac Mandy, brings a sort of Joe Pesci-in-GoodFellas-meets-Eastenders vibe to her chilling, stupidly hilarious appearances, and Paul Cooper as Martin, Kerry’s repugnant father, is so unbearably awful I nearly brought back the TV Characters I Would Fight series just to talk about him.

But, beyond the comedy, I think what sets This Country apart for me is how well it captures the genuine struggles of living in a small town like this one, too. The way these small communities can, for some people, allow for a drifting sense of pointlessness and hopelessness that’s really hard to understand if you haven’t seen it yourself, but This Country has these moments of genuine sadness and melancholy. Looking out over the gorgeous pastoral countryside and knowing it might as well be a prison for Kerry and Kurtain for the chances they stand of getting out of it (whether they deserve that freedom or not). The show uses the naturally-circular set-up on a sitcom to underline this feeling of everything stretching on unto eternity, no real hope of change in sight. There are a few moments in the show that really caught me off-guard with how emotionally impactful they were, especially when the focus is on Paul Chahadi’s local vicar, an endless beam of warm, genuine optimism despite the endless rotation of problems his parishoners create.

If the show was nothing but a comedy, it would still be an outrageous success, but the fact that it can bring in these little nuances so deftly and with such ease and impact is what elevates it into perfection. I’m really looking forward to seeing what the Coopers do next, though, to be quite honest, if they chose to do nothing more than keep returning to this small town, I wouldn’t mind at all.

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(header image via I Am Birmingham)