The Cutprice Guignol

I think we can all agree that there’s nothing funnier than a bit of religious fundamentalism.

Well. Now I read that back, perhaps I could have phrased it differently. But, when it comes to great modern sitcoms, one of the UK’s best recent additions to the genre is about exactly that – the bombastically-titled Everyone Else Burns, created by Dillon Mapletoft and Oliver Taylor, which might just be one of the UK’s best sitcoms of the 2020s.

Everyone Else Burns tracks the experiences of a family in Manchester who follow the teachings of a fundamentalist Christian sect – family patriarch David (Simon Bird, who, and I will never stop banging on about this, directed Such Brave Girls and therefore is my best friend for life), his wife Fiona (Kate O’Flynn, whose recent turn in the brilliant Widow’s Bay was what reminded me of this show in the first place), and their children, Rachel (Amy James-Kelly) and Aaron (Harry Connor).

And look, straight-up, Everyone Else Burns is an exceptionally and subversively witty take on religious extremism (a sentence I never thought I’d type, but here we are). Mapletoft and Oliver are not afraid to go for the touchy subjects of misogyny, oppression, and brainwashing that come with the territory of a belief system as extreme as this one, but it’s played relatively straight, the absurdity coming from the abject normalcy that they’re treated with by the family themselves. The supporting cast is packed with legends of British comedy like Morgana Robinson, Lolly Adefobe, and Al Roberts, with Sian Clifford stealing the entire show in season two with the most repressed homewrecker you’ve ever seen in your life. It’s a genuinely brilliant comedy, which is primarily the intent of the show, and for that alone, it’s worth a watch. Even if it’s just for Simon Bird’s wig.

But I think where it really elevates itself to brilliance is how it approaches the way that the ridiculous can become mundane with enough repetition, when it’s all you have ever known – and how that can change. The show opens with the family being dragged out of bed by David to prepare for the incoming apocalypse, putting us right in the midst of this family’s bizarre sense of normal, and it slowly unpicks it from that point out, the rest of the community sticking pins in their belief system until it’s so full of punctures it struggles to hold up the way it once did.

From Fiona’s sexual awakening to Rachel’s exploration of the possibilities for her beyond the confines of their cult to Aaron’s, well, compelling artwork, we start with their normal, as bizarre as it seems from the outside and as far as its pushed for comedic value, only to see it beginning to unravel by the season’s end. There’s not some grand statement where they all break away from the oppressive cult by the time the credits roll, that would be too easy, but there’s this sense of a teetering change for all of them. It starts with the end of the world and ends, at least for now, with the seedling of the start of what feels like a new one for the family.

Everyone Else Burns takes a premise that could. so easily, tip over into the proletyzing that so many of the central characters fit their life around, but finds genuine sympathy and insight into the various shapes normalcy can take – and how they can change. If you’ve seen this show, let me know what you thought in the comments below!

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(header image via Channel 4)