Photograph: HBO
For anyone from a tight-knit small town who has moved away, the “what if I never left” question may be one that lingers in the mind. This is the story that fuels Somebody Somewhere, which stars the New York cabaret legend Bridget Everett as Sam, who moves back to Manhattan, Kansas, to nurse her sister as she dies of cancer, and ends up settling down, if you can call it that, in the town where she was born and raised. There has always been a sense that this show was fighting against the odds. It is a subtle and gentle tale in a TV landscape that rewards big bangs, and it is one of those beautiful, sad comedies that elicit the occasional belly laugh, but mostly leave behind a low-level hum of melancholy. This summer, HBO announced that this third season will be its last.
Somebody Somewhere bows out as it came in, exploring the push and pull between loneliness and human connection. Sam is finally getting on with her surviving sister, Tricia (a fabulous Mary Catherine Garrison), now that Tricia’s divorce from Rick has come through. Tricia’s commercial empire, built on embroidering one particularly rude word on soft furnishings and homeware, is going great guns and has given her financial stability and a massive car. For Tricia, life as a single woman, whose daughter has left home, brings its own challenges. A related scene between Sam and Tricia, in a hotel bathroom in Kansas City, is one of the show’s rare and deserved belly-laugh moments.
