Us
Sunday, BBC1
Schitt’s Creek
Netflix
Rating: 
Us is an adaptation of the novel by David Nicholls about a middle-aged married couple who may or may not stay together, which doesn’t sound especially compelling, but it is. It may even be one of those instances where the screen adaptation is better than the book, which I remember as so-so, even if it was long-listed for the Booker prize, whereas this is terrific. It’s beautifully acted and beautifully scripted, funny as well as moving, and as the entire series was made available after the first episode was broadcast I watched all four, one after the other, bang, bang, bang, bang. Didn’t intend to. Just had to. And, thankfully, it then meant I didn’t have time for that other Sunday-night drama, ITV’s The Singapore Grip. Charles Dance was wise to die – ‘the rising sun, the rising sun…!’ – at the end of the first episode although it must have rankled with the other cast members. (‘Can’t I die at the end of the first episode? Can’t I?’).
Saskia Reeves, Tom Hollander and Tom Taylor in Us. Deborah Ross writes: ‘It’s beautifully acted and beautifully scripted, funny as well as moving’
Us stars Saskia Reeves and Tom Hollander, which gives you two reasons to watch, right there. They play Connie and Douglas, who have a 17-year-old son, Albie (Tom Taylor) and are due to embark on a three-week tour of Europe before Albie starts at art college. Douglas, a biochemist, has planned the trip with meticulous precision. But then, as they’re lying sleeplessly in bed, Connie says: ‘Douglas, I need to say something. Douglas, I’ve been thinking about leaving. I think our marriage might be over… I want change.’ Douglas is baffled and thrown. He can change, he insists. ‘No, you’re great’, she says, ‘I just don’t think I can spend the rest of my life with you. The two of us rattling around… doesn’t that frighten you?’ ‘No,’ he says. The following morning he immediately heads to his ‘fortress of solitude’, the local dump, where he sobs and tears up cardboard to the music of Mozart. The dump is, of course, a metaphor for getting rid of stuff that is broken or doesn’t work, but also it’s a pivotal scene in which we see that Douglas, who so often can’t express himself, or will express himself wrongly, feels very deeply.
Somewhat inexplicably, I agree, they decide to go ahead with their trip, which now has an added goal for Douglas: can he win Connie back? Given Connie is so his opposite, you do wonder why the hell she married him in the first instance, but flashbacks – with Iain De Caestecker and Gina Bramhill playing their younger selves – show us that she was an artist before settling for marriage and motherhood, was on the rebound from someone unreliable, and was attracted to his steadying hand. I could buy that. So they set off with all their baggage, real and emotional, while much comedy is wrung from Douglas’s squareness. This is a man who organises sightseeing to ‘beat the crowds’ and, when writing a list of ways he might change, includes his plan to be ‘more spontaneous’. Reeves is wonderful but Hollander owns this. He plays a boring man not boringly, and how you do that, I don’t know. More, he can play a boring man sympathetically. I think we are meant to be on #teamconnie but actually I was on #teamdouglas throughout. I can’t, in fact, think of another actor who can do this apart, perhaps, from Tom Hanks.
Meanwhile, if you’ve yet to watch it all, there are so many treats in store.
Sofie Grabol pops up. You’ll warm to Albie and understand his initial hostility. Douglas makes a sartorial purchase in Venice that’ll have you howling with laughter. And it’s not just Venice you’ll get to see. Also it’s Paris and Barcelona and Amsterdam and Siena and the one thing that (I realised) I most miss about travelling: the hotel buffet breakfast. And I’m with Albie’s friend, Kat (Thaddea Graham): fill your pockets for later. You’d be a fool not to (#teamkat).
Schitt’s Creek is the Canadian comedy drama that recently won nine awards at the Emmys. There have been six seasons, all of which passed me by, for some reason, so I thought I’d correct that.
Schitt’s Creek. ‘The matriarch, Moira, a washed-up soap star, is played by Catherine O’Hara with a diction and lunacy that is wonderfully mesmerising,’ writes Deborah Ross
The series follows the super-rich, super-spoilt Rose family who, after a financial calamity, are newly poor and have to decamp to a town (Schitt’s Creek) that the patriarch, Johnny (Eugene Levy) bought years earlier as a joke. The matriarch, Moira, a washed-up soap star, is played by Catherine O’Hara with a diction and lunacy that is wonderfully mesmerising.
There are some terrific jokes, as with the town’s welcome sign – ‘It’s alright! It’s his sister!’ – or when Moira and Johnny discuss whether they’ve been good parents. Yes, concludes Johnny, because ‘we sent them to the best boarding schools and hired the most expensive nannies. We did everything right.’
The early episodes are writ large but I’m now midway though series one and can see it’s becoming more nuanced as the grounds are laid for future character work. I’ll stick with it but, as I’ve so many episodes to watch, it may be that I’ll never catch up with The Singapore Grip at all. Oh, well.