Somebody Somewhere can be a hard sell. In each of its roughly half-hour episodes, people talk, drive, go home. It is a series of small character studies, set in a sleepy town in Kansas, and whatever plot rears its head tends to gently nudge the drama forward in ever-so-gentle increments. Yet, just as it did in its superlative first season, it stuffs every subtle scene with emotion, poignancy and a great sense of humour.
In season one, Sam (Bridget Everett) returns to her home town of Manhattan, Kansas, from another life, elsewhere, to care for her sister Holly, who was dying of cancer. The action begins after Holly’s death, and follows Sam through a midlife crisis as she struggles to fit back in to the place where she grew up. We see her grieving, friendless, lonely, dealing with an alcoholic mother and a farmer father whose business is disappearing in front of them.
It doesn’t sound like a barrel of laughs, but Sam made friends, found a community of local outsiders and started to use her powerful singing voice at a cabaret night, illicitly camping out in the local church under the guise of “choir practice”. It is a celebration of not fitting in, as well as a tender tribute to the particular love that home can offer, and it’s really quite beautiful.
It returns for a second season largely unaltered, and its unhurried charm is a welcome antidote to some of television’s more stress-inducing proclivities. (It has also just been renewed for a third season, so there is an appetite for this kind of thing.) Sam and best friend Joel are temporarily living together as Joel rents out his house, though the pair are rapidly becoming as close as a couple. Their mutual disgust at anyone who mistakes them for an item is very funny indeed. They try to get their 10,000 steps a day in while playing “pound it or pass” with anyone who walks by, and fail to stick to their Designated Non-Drinking Nights. “You almost make Sam fun,” says her sister, Tricia, to Joel. “Almost.”
A few circumstances have shifted, though little has changed. Tricia is now divorced and her daughter, Shannon, has left for college. Mutual friend Fred has returned early from his sabbatical in Wisconsin, with a fiancee, Susie, in tow, and their relationship is the engine of the series. Sam’s mother, Mary-Jo, is in a residential “independence village” and, most poignantly, her father, Ed, is fishing in Texas with his brother; the actor who played Ed, Mike Hagerty, died between seasons.
Much of the first season was driven by Sam’s reluctance to commit to Manhattan. This time, she is much more integrated into goings-on there, though her loneliness and insecurities remain painfully close to the surface. Again, it doesn’t sound like a laugh a minute, but there is a synchronised bout of food poisoning and all that entails, a colour-coordinated stag do and a liberal use of the c-word as Tricia inadvertently starts a business selling cushions with foul-mouthed slogans on them.
The humour happens so loosely that it often seems improvised, and when Sam and Joel make each other laugh, it is deeply infectious. There is some real beauty in Somebody Somewhere, too. The cabaret-esque church gathering is no longer happening, but Sam finds another way to use her voice, returning to her old high school music teacher for singing lessons. There aren’t many series that bring on tears as often as this one, particularly not when they are also highly proficient comedies, but Somebody Somewhere has a knack for spiky sentimentality that goes for the jugular. It is impressively opposed to the idea of showiness or razzmatazz, but even in its quietest moments, it is dazzling stuff.
Somebody Somewhere aired on Sky Comedy and is available on Now. It is streaming on Binge in Australia.
