Why you should be watching Back to Life
Helen Archer | On 01, May 2019
This review is based on Season 1. Read our review of Season 2 here.
This new comedy takes the tradition for flawed female characters trying to make their way in life and turns it up to 11.
Daisy Haggard (who also co-wrote the series with Laura Solon) plays Miri, who is returning to her childhood home on the Kent coast after 18 years spent in prison. Getting used to how things have changed in the time she’s been inside (her bafflement at everyone’s obsession with phones and the posters on the walls of her old bedroom – George Michael, Prince, David Bowie and Jamie Oliver (“last man standing”, as her mother (Geraldine James) calls him), is the least of her worries. She is also returning to a hostile community who still bear a grudge for her crime and are out to make her life as difficult as possible.
The series follows Miri as she gets a job at a chippie and starts a tentative new relationship, while reconciling the ghosts of her past, and discovering what led to the incident which put her in jail. A great supporting cast, including Richard Durden as her compost-obsessed father, Adeel Akhtar as the next door neighbour who befriends her, Liam Williams as her new boss, and Christine Bottomley as her old schoolfriend, bring life to their characters, although there are a couple of subplots which don’t add much and take the focus away from the main meat of the programme.
Back to Life has been compared to Fleabag, with good reason – the programmes share the same producers, debuted on BBC Three, and takes the “dysfunctional heroine” to new extremes – and its melancholic humour and first-rate acting will surely act as great calling cards.
This short review was originally published as part of a fortnightly BBC Three column.