SECOND CHANCE (BACK TO LIFE, SERIES ONE)

 

It seems wonderfully apt that Daisy Haggard's sitcom 'Back to Life' essentially got a second chance to find an audience over lockdown.

A comedy drama about a middle class woman trying to make the best of her own second chance after serving time for murder, the BBC3 and Showtime show slipped out quietly on BBC1's schedules and the BBC iPlayer over April 2019.

Those who saw the show raved about 'Back to Life' but it remained largely under the viewing public's radar.

However when lockdown happened in 2020, 'Back to Life' popped up on many people's algorithm on Netflix and was discovered by a whole new audience.

Haggard plays Miri, a woman who has spent the prime of her youth - her twenties and thirties - behind bars.

Released from prison where she was jailed for the clifftop murder of her best friend in Kent when she was teenager, she wants to embrace the opportunity to forge a new life.

However, with no money and no job, that means returning to the Kent seaside town of Hythe and initially living with her elderly parents.

At the start of the series, those parents Richard Durden's Oscar Matteson and Geraldine James' Caroline are waiting for her as she is released and bring her back to their comfortable home.

The world, however, has radically changed - a running gag throughout the show.

Everyone has a mobile phone.

Social media wasn't even conceived when she was a teen.

Discmans were regarded as cutting edge technology when she was last on the outside.

Even the posters on Miri's bedroom wall are of pop and rock icons who have surprisingly passed away - George Michael, Prince and David Bowie.

The community that Miri returns to is also hostile to her release.

Slogans are daubed on the family's wall and a neighbour's car, calling her a psycho.

Applying for a cleaning job, Miri is told on the phone not to bother coming in for an interview because she's not welcome.

Even when Liam Williams' Nathan takes a chance and gives her a job in a chip shop, a brick is thrown through its window - resulting in a nasty gash on the side of her head.

An effigy of her is hung from a tree in her parents' garden and she gets withering looks and snarky comments from staff in the local supermarket.

Someone even goes to the trouble of pooing in a gift box and sending it through the post.

Despite all this, Miri and her parents soldier on trying to reintegrate her into society.

In addition to Nathan's surprising act of kindness in taking her on despite her local infamy, Miri strikes a chord with her parents' neighbour, Adeel Akhtar's Billy who is caring for Souad Adel Faress's Anna who has dementia.

Billy takes her out for an ice cream and a tentative relationship begins - although not without its complications.

Her former school friend, Christine Bottomley's Mandy is now a head teacher in the school they used to attend as teenagers and is keen to make amends for not visiting Miri in jail.

Weighed down by the mundanity of parenting and her middle class, fortysomething married life, Lara likes to smoke joints, drink and even at one point propositions Nathan.

Miri also begins to realise that when she was in jail her parents insulated her from disappointing developments on the outside, withholding from her the revelation that her ex-boyfriend, Jamie Michie's Dom had moved on and started a family.

Calling round to his new house, Dom is initially flirtatious until his wife turns up with her baby in a pram.

It soon dawns on Miri he is married when Dom starts to pretend she is an aggressive charity worker, canvassing for money.

As the series wears on, Dom turns out to be a bit of a lascivious prick - pestering Miri to have a relationship with him while also having an affair with her mum Caroline.

Reading back this synopsis, 'Back to Life' sounds like an earnest Channel 4 drama but it is anything but.

While it is true that the scales of Haggard and her fellow writer Laura Solon's comedy drama tilt slightly towards drama, the show has many laugh out loud moments and it turns out to be one of the most original British sitcoms of recent times.

There really hasn't been a sitcom built around a convicted criminal since the BBC1 classic 'Porridge' with Ronnie Barker which daringly turned prison inmates into loveable rogues.

'Back to Life' does this very well, somehow managing to squeeze humour out of a show that depicts the huge challenges that offenders face reintegrating into society.

It also helps that Haggard is such an appealing performer.

With her slightly kooky Emma Thompson vibe, Haggard plays Miri as a nice, misunderstood, middle class Englishwoman who was dealt a terrible hand in her teenage years.

Denounced in the tabloids as a calculating teenage murderess who lured her friend to her death on a clifftop, we realise as the series wears on that the death of Imogen Gurney's Lara is not as clear cut as it seems.

This is largely down to revelations unearthed by Frank Feys' interfering amateur sleuth Samuel about the circumstances surrounding the tragedy.

But if Haggard provides the soft centre of the show, most of the cast supply plenty of salt.

Durden and James are excellent as Miri's elderly parents.

The former plays her father, Oscar as a stiff but well meaning man who feels more comfortable talking about environmental catastrophe and his tomatoes than about his feelings towards his errant wife.

As Caroline, James does a superb job as the troubled parent of a grown woman, riddled with guilt about the affair she is having with Miri's ex-boyfriend, bored and frustrated by her husband's lack of interest in sex, worried about her daughter committing a crime and slightly angry that the family name has been tarnished by the death of Lara.

Akhtar again turns in a fantastic performance as Billy, a kind but reserved man whose circumstances are so difficult he tiptoes around a potential relationship with Miri.

Bottomley revels in the chance to play an irresponsible pillar of the local community, while Michie is impressively sleazy as the fickle, sex mad, sad sack Dom.

Faress manages to turn Anna into an amusing, foul mouthed character despite her condition, as she harangues Miri from her bedroom window or the garden fence.

Williams imbues Nathan with a generosity of spirit that punches through his awkwardness, while Feys cuts an enigmatic, oddball figure as Samuel.

There are some amusing turns too from Jo Martin as a food obsessed, easily distracted probation officer Janice and Juliet Cowan as Tina, an overzealous police officer who is obsessed with scooping Miri off the streets.

The format of six half hour episodes really works for 'Back to Life,' which is efficiently directed by Christopher Sweeney.

It gives the show real focus as the writers and their cast balance its light and shade, its comedy and drama.

In many respects, 'Back to Life' achieves that balance better than Ricky Gervais' Netflix comedy 'Afterlife' which also takes a heavy subject - grief after the death of a partner from cancer- and tries to squeeze out laughs 

This is partly because Haggard and Solon deliver a higher quotient of laughs amid the drama, without the humour ever getting too barbed.

Nor do they resort to the sort of shock tactics that Gervais is prone to reach for when he is trying to elicit laughs.

Just like Miri, the first series of 'Back to Life' deserves its second chance on streaming, as it is one of the finest and most daring sitcoms to surface for years.

And with a second series in the bag, it'll be fascinating to see if Haggard and Solon can maintain their fine balance of smartly observed comedy and illuminating drama.

'Back to Life,' back to reality.

 ('Back to Life' was originally released for streaming on the BBC3 strand of the BBC iPlayer on April 15, 2019)