I thought I had the measure of Smothered. This romcom is written by Monica Heisey, the Schitt’s Creek and Workin’ Moms writer whose debut novel, Really Good, Actually, was a big hit this year, so I imagined that I knew what this was going to be like. I expected an acidic comedy dripping with sharp observations about modern dating and the impossibility of cliched romantic love. What I didn’t expect was for Smothered to be quite as lovely as it turns out to be.
It is being pushed as a romcom with a twist, a fresh update on a well-worn genre that is trying hard to revive itself after a couple of decades in the wilderness. The early signs are that it is doing just that. Sammy (Danielle Vitalis) is in her early 20s and we meet her at a sex club, where she talks too much about her intimacy issues to the stranger she’s trying to hook up with. She leaves long, drunken, rambling voice notes for an ex whom she has saved in her phone under a “do not call” name, veering between being nice, angry and telling him he’s an “iron-deficient prick” – which is, somehow, a very funny insult.
