The Big C: Get your weird back

Not sure you want to watch a new sitcom about cancer? Which bit is putting you off? The ‘cancer’ or ‘new sitcom’ – come on be honest…

The good news is that judging by this first episode The Big C is not a sitcom. It has ‘sit’ (middle-aged wife and mother Cathy Jamison, bored with life (and a bit boring as a result) is diagnosed with terminal cancer and finds herself ‘getting her weird back’) and it has ‘com’ (Cathy’s revenge on her louse of a teenaged son for example) – but calling it a sitcom seems a bit harsh.

This is much more Six Feet Under and Nurse Jackie territory than Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps. We meet Cathy (the fabulous Laura Linney) asking a builder for a swimming pool in her small (by American standards) yard and being persuaded to get a hot tub and barbecue pit instead. Shortly after that we meet her immature husband Paul (Oliver Platt), who is currently sleeping on his sister’s couch but is keen to fix the relationship. She lets herself be talked into having dinner with him, so she can get to an appointment with her doctor.

Those of you who were actually more worried about the cancer bit than the sitcom bit should be able to start relaxing around now. There’s no dramatic overly-sentimental reveal of her diagnosis, just some light-hearted banter with the slightly Hugh Grant-ish Dr Mauer and the news that Cathy doesn’t want to do radiotherapy because she’ll lose her hair (apparently if it caused your nose to fall off she’d have gone for it though…).

We also get to experience the spiky relationship between Cathy and her ultra-environmentally-concerned (but not un-loving) brother Sean, meet her practical-joker son Adam and start getting to know Andrea, a mouthy, obese student in Cathy’s class.

This is proper grown-up TV with dialogue that subtly and slowly reveals the depths of the characters. And it is funny. Not laugh out loud funny, but definitely funny. In between funny there is plenty of thoughtful, a little sad, and the first signs of ‘You go girl!’ assertiveness.

If you watched Zen: Ratking and the conversation about how an unhappy marriage can turn you into a person you don’t know or like anymore struck a chord, then The Big C will resonate too. The difference is that Cathy is a worm who’s turning, and as her brother says ‘getting her weird back’. She’s not eaten an onion in 15 years because her childish husband ‘says they’re stinky poo-poo’. Guess what’s back on her shopping list now?

Other reasons to love Cathy:

• Not ordering anything other than liquor and desserts at dinner.
• Her assessment of The Patriot – Mel Gibson is ‘medium-good’…
• Her advice to bitchy Andrea: “You can’t be fat and mean – fat people are jolly for a reason. Fat repels people but joy attracts them. You can either be fat and jolly or a skinny bitch, it’s up to you.”
• Her rant at her neighbour Marlene, after she interferes with the digging of the super-small swimming pool.
• Her cartwheeling down the school hall…
• Her ‘moment’ in the bath (and the girly screaming it provokes from Adam).
• The speech to Adam: “Some day I am going to be dead and as a courtesy to the world I don’t want to leave them a guy who doesn’t know how to get his shit to flush and, let me be clear, your dad isn’t living here because I only wanted to raise one kid and I choose you and from now on I’m going to raise you so hard, your head is going to spin…”
• The red wine on the sofa and the beatific smile on Cathy’s face…
• The closing ‘on the couch’ speech.

Catch episode one on 4OD and set your PVR for next Thursday night (More4, 11pm). Your life will be richer for it – I promise.

Posted by Jo the Hat