My new favorite show

I’m now caught up on Catastrophe, on Amazon Prime.

NY Times: “One of its creators, Sharon Horgan, is a veteran sitcom writer and star who could be fairly called the Tina Fey of British TV, in stature if not style. The other, Rob Delaney, is an American comedian best known for having more than a million Twitter followers.” I didn’t think it was a British comedy but then the British do seem to like it a lot more than the Americans.

To me, it kinda feels like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia with money and education.

Rob meets Sharon on a business trip in London and accidentally gets her preg. They decide to work it out.

The reviewers kept mentioning the chemistry, which is there and is great. But what I love about the show is how unlikeable, yet unsettlingly relatable the characters are. I see myself so much in Sharon that I sometimes pause the show to check my phone, but really to relieve the discomfort. Sharon is a cold, selfish, biting asshole who gets away with it because she’s pretty and funny. Rob is a warm, loving, pushover squish of a man.

I love how unflinching the show is, about everything. The show examines Sharon’s placelessness. She’s not warm-and-fuzzy enough for Mommy-and-me moms, but not high-functioning and ambitious enough for her best friend who goes back to work. To say I relate…

Catastrophe shows the parts of love we know but don’t like to think about. It shows what’s in between the highs and the lows. We see Sharon and Rob’s ambivalence, fear, and boredom. And, as a Washington Post review pointed out, it’s about people in their 40’s. Another thing we don’t often see.

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