Rain Dogs opens with a bang. Literally: the police are kicking the door down of Costello Jones’ flat.
But she’s one step ahead of them – shoving what possessions she can into a bin bag, she grabs her daughter Iris, shoulders her way out and flicks the officers the middle finger as she leaves. And so begins Daisy May Cooper’s newest drama, a show that attempts to do many things and only succeeds at some of them.
First and foremost, this is a tale of grinding poverty in a broken Britain, split into eight neat, thirty-minute segments. Costello is living in a flat the rent of which she can’t afford, working several jobs (as a pole dancer, as an artist’s muse for an old letch and whatever else pays the bills) to keep a roof over their heads.
Yet, by the end of episode one, she’s back out on the streets, smashing car windows so that she and Iris can crawl inside and keep warm before caving in and spending the night with a ‘neighbour’ – which quickly goes sour when it becomes apparent he expects sex in return. It starts the show on a high (or low) which it struggles to match in all the episodes that follow.
Costello’s quest to provide for herself and Iris (a sparky Fleur Tashjian, in her first-ever role) forms the emotional crux of the show, and Daisy May Cooper gives it her all. Her Costello is brash, foul-mouthed and funny, but with a vulnerability to her that shines through during the quieter moments.
Matching her is the show’s antihero, Selby, played with delicious vindictiveness by Jack Farthing. Selby is Costello’s oldest friend, from university, but he’s also a bad influence – just out of jail and angling to find a way back into her life, he brings with him chaos (he’s a madman) but also, potentially, tantalisingly salvation (he comes from a filthy rich family).
And yet, it doesn’t quite stick the landing. Yes, there are ambitious themes here, and some of the show’s best scenes are its hardest-hitting: for instance, when a journalist offers Costello a chance to realise her dreams as an author by paying her to write an exposé about her life as a sex worker – before taking her quotes out of context and publishing a grimy piece in the local paper. Rain Dogs has heartbreaking moments, but falls prey to a stupendously silly plot development at the end of episode three that derails it and undercuts the stakes significantly.
It feels like the show is struggling to be two separate things: both a campy comedy and a gritty, hard-hitting drama. But when you’re watching Selby pee in Costello’s bathtub one minute and watching Costello trying to scrape together a few quid as a stripper at a grimy peep show the next, the tonal dissonance leaves you reeling, and Selby’s huge family wealth also doesn’t help make Costello’s desperate situation feel any more believable. The secondary characters – such as Costello’s best friend Gloria and any of her love interests – are too thinly drawn to make you root for them, and Iris, who starts the show as Costello’s motivation for finding a better life, all-but disappears somewhere in the middle, shunted to one side in favour of the petty infighting between Costello and Selby.
There are some quietly devastating moments – Costello being told by her disappointing, middle-class one night stand that “you know I’m better than you, right?” – and the relationship between her and her daughter, when it gets a moment to breathe, is really heartwarming.
But really, Rain Dogs doesn’t quite manage to mix its two competing genres successfully enough to keep you caring.
