Anybody not familiar with niche hit show There She Goes might well be tempted to turn this on for a relaxing Sunday watch.
Let me say straight off – it is not that. Roughly twenty minutes into proceedings, I found myself blubbering at the screen like an absolute flannel. Ten minutes later, it happened all over again.
So don’t come expecting light-hearted capers. This show is the most harrowing ‘comedy’ I’ve ever seen, but it’s also a beautiful bit of television featuring stellar performances from its two leads, David Tennant and Jessica Hynes.
For those unfamiliar with the show (or for anyone who needs a quick refresher), the premise is this: Tennant and Hynes play Simon and Emily Yates, parents to Ben and their daughter Rosie, who is disabled. Rosie (played by non-disabled actress Miley Locke) has developmental difficulties, but nobody is sure how best to help her given that little is known about her rare chromosomal condition – leaving Simon and Emily to attempt to raise her as best they can.
This one-special picks up the story after the events of the original two seasons, which ran between 2018 and 2020 and drew inspiration from the show’s creator Shaun Pye’s own experiences raising their daughter, Joey (Pye’s wife, Sarah Crawford, co-wrote the script). Now, Rosie is thirteen and entering adolescence – much to Simon and Emily’s horror.
Now they have to deal with mood swings and hormones, which manifest in Rosie’s case in scenes of frightening self-harm and anger. In one particularly harrowing scene, an exhausted and tearful Simon tries to stop Rosie from biting him, only to have her start pulling out chunks of her hair instead. “Hurt me instead. Please hurt me,” he begs her, Tennant’s puppy-dog eyes working overtime. Sob.
As per the original TV series, there is also a flashback sequence to 2009. This puts Tennant and Hynes in age-appropriate wigs as they agonise about whether or not to have a third child (Rosie, at this point, is three).
Simon, who is at this point drinking heavily, is against it. Emily is keen, but torn: what if they have another child like Rosie?
“Are you suggesting before we next have sex you do a cost-benefit analysis?” Simon asks her dryly (he gets most of the best lines). It’s a joke, but a few days later, he finds a list of cons by the bedside. The pros? None.
This type of gallows humour runs throughout the entire hour of television like a stick of Brighton Rock. For some, the brutal candour will likely be a bit much – rather like hearing your mum say she didn’t really enjoy your dance recital. As Emily says (within earshot of Rosie), “she’s the girl that never grew up, like an annoying Peter Pan.”
“She’s like a yellow in snooker,” Simon retorts. “Not as flashy as the other colours, but very handy if you overrun position on the blue.”
Beyond the jokes, this is a deeply tender account. Some of the scenarios – awkward run-ins with other well-meaning parents; the police coming around after a meltdown sparks a report of child abduction – have such a ring of authenticity to them that they must surely have been taken straight from Pye’s own life.
Is this the last time we’ll see the Yates family? The show makes an attempt to give them some kind of resolution – towards the end, Rosie is finally diagnosed – but the subject matter evades a neat ending.
Plus, the acting is so good that it would be a crime not to see these guys again. Give us another special, five years down the line: this time, I’ll bring the tissues.
