WHAT IT'S ABOUT: Annie (Aidy Bryant, "Saturday Night Live") works as a writer at an alt-weekly in Portland, Ore., and lives with best friend Fran (Lolly Adefope), and also has encounters of the sexual kind with sometime boyfriend Ryan (Luka Jones). Then there's mom (Julia Sweeney) and dad (Daniel Stern) too _ the latter suffering from cancer. Meanwhile, Annie is also, in her own blunt self-assessment, "fat." This six-parter is adapted from the 2016 Lindy West memoir, "Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman."
MY SAY: Setting aside Portland and a few other minor details, "Shrill" shares a bond in sisterhood with "Girls" and AMC's recent (and since canceled) "Dietland." They're each about women trapped in a thin-centric world where indignities, or worse, lie in wait _ poised to ruin days or demolish self-images. Boyfriends are losers. Bosses are creeps. Parents are well-meaning but really, really annoying. Thank God for the roomie who "gets" them. Thank God even more for that gradual, life-affirming realization that "talent" and "voice" and sheer inner fortitude can and will vanquish the cold, cruel world _ or at least that troll who keeps posting vile comments on Annie's stories.
There were and are differences. "Dietland" was filled with the savage indignation of star showrunner Marti Noxon, "Girls" with the ironic detachment of its star and showrunner Lena Dunham. "Shrill" has a pair of star showrunners too _ super-stars, in fact, in Lorne Michaels and Elizabeth Banks. They rely on a constellation of other big-name writers and directors to bring West's memoir to life.
