In 2017, Sharon Horgan wrote a short for Sky Comedy, about a woman who attends her sister’s baby shower while secretly up the duff herself. Morgana Robinson, clad in an ironically garish “Princess Diana” T-shirt, played the slightly divvy protagonist, Mel. Her pregnant sibling was a sweaty and elementarily furious Sheridan Smith: roasting, ready to pop and clad in little more than a pair of bikini bottoms. Their mum – Frances Barber – was a sunburnt lush, attempting to add tinned tomatoes to the Bacardi punch. Set in the family’s home town of Margate, it was a summer hellscape: gross, grotty, foul-mouthed, simmering with familial resentment. It was also laugh-out-loud funny. That Horgan won a Bafta for her trouble came as no surprise.
It’s also no surprise that Sky have decided to expand these 10 minutes of taut, bristling comedy into a six-part dramedy. In doing so, however, there have been significant personnel changes. Horgan is off writing duties (she is still executive producer), replaced by a team that includes the comedian Sarah Kendall, the author Emma Jane Unsworth and Gabby Best, who plays Clare, one of two other sisters who appear in both versions. Trish – originally the extravagantly talented Smith – is now played by Doctor Who’s Freema Agyeman. And instead of the amusingly vacant Robinson, we have Lily Allen, in her first TV role.
