Immediately preceding the first series there was an interview with Lucy Prebble on British radio where she said in the course of writing the series her and Billie Piper wrote a list of things "they couldn't possibly say" but eventually ended up using everything. It's not necessarily easy to imagine which of the many brutally sharp observations on display here came from the list but the concept of it popped into my mind every time the show pushed things into deeply uncomfortable waters.
Piper plays a former child pop star turned sci-fi B-lister whose life crumbles after compromising pictures of her are stolen from her phone and made public. Each episode covers a perceived stage of grief and covers a myriad of subjects from the public to the private about what it is to be, essentially, Billie Piper. This feels like lived experience, in all its gut-wrenching, out-of-control anxietywhirl of nauseating honesty. There are no easy answers, there are no selfless people, there is no safe place. It's not an easy watch at all. It's like watching the slow autopsy of a living person but instead of organs the writhing body is stuffed full of mirrors that reflect everything that's horrible about yourself about society, about everything we never say and always see. It's that kind of a show and not at all for everyone. The second three-parter series "I Hate Suzie Too" is just as breathlessly terrifying, and has an ending I don't think I'll ever forget.
The cast are generally brilliant but it's the role of a lifetime for Piper. She's perfect for this kind of role (herself) and you can feel everything through her almost instantaneously, she changes like the weather, instantly and completely. Her and Prebble's unknowable list hangs over the whole endeavour - everything that should never be said, gingerly taken down piece by piece and crammed into the narrative until there is nothing left to say.
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