Nick Hornby’s 2014 novel Funny Girl was about a woman with the mind of a comedy nerd and the looks of a pin-up model: Barbara Parker may have been crowned Miss Blackpool, but she was desperate to escape her home town and follow in the footsteps of her idol, Lucille Ball. It’s no spoiler to reveal that she becomes a star – albeit in the musty world of mid-century British sitcom rather than its glamorous US counterpart.
Funny Woman, the Sky adaptation of that novel, stripped away this fixation with comedy. In series one, Parker – who changes her name to Sophie Straw at the behest of a sleazy agent (Rupert Everett, in an off-puttingly hammy performance) – moves to London simply to “be someone”, ending up a TV sitcom star mainly by chance. It was slightly disappointing to see the book’s USP played down in favour of something more generic, but – ironically – Funny Woman did improve on its source material in one crucial way. In the book, we are told Sophie is hilarious, although we rarely witness it. Gemma Arterton actually managed to imbue our deceptively daffy protagonist with quick wit and exemplary comic timing.
