The premise of Life & Beth is pure Amy Schumer. Finally arriving in the UK this week on Disney Plus, the Hulu series – in which she not only stars, but writes, produces, and occasionally directs – sees her play a Manhattan wine salesperson confronting the numerous dissatisfactions in her life. She doesn’t like her boyfriend, who doesn’t appreciate her. She doesn’t like her job, which requires her to befriend people she, rightly, finds inane. She’s distant from her family. But this time, something’s different.
The specific brand of urban millennial that we’ve come to expect from Schumer’s narcissistic protagonists is still here – think Amy, the binge-drinking magazine writer from Trainwreck, or Renee, the image-obsessed cosmetics firm employee from I Feel Pretty. But where they chose to indulge their worst instincts, Beth chooses self-reflection. When someone she loves dies unexpectedly in the series premiere, Beth retreats to the suburban Long Island town where she grew up for some soul-searching. The realisation that she needs to overhaul her life isn’t the show’s tidy conclusion, but its jumping off point. This is Amy Schumer gone zen. Goodbye tequila shots; hello Saturday night bargain shopping at TK Maxx.
