Oh happy day, when we were divided from America, as that insightful old veggie burger George Bernard Shaw had it, only by a common language. These days, there’s rather a lot more to contend with. One that may still be swimming under your radar – or perhaps just obscured by the massive orange flares going off every 30 seconds – is the multibillion dollar “troubled teen industry”. From sea to shining sea, the US is filled with privately run “therapeutic” institutions that promise to rehabilitate “difficult” teenagers and turn them into civilised members of society. They are often transported there by “teen escort services”, who come for the unsuspecting adolescents in the middle of the night and remove them against their – though not their parents’ – will from the family home. “But that’s tantamount to kidnap!” you may think, in your silly British way. And that is why they fought to become independent of us and our lily-livers all those years ago.
That is the background against which Mae Martin, standup comedian and writer of the immaculate comedy, Feel Good, has created the eight part mystery drama Wayward. (Martin is non-binary and uses they/them pronouns. Their character in Wayward, a cop called Alex Dempsey, is a trans man. Martin’s mesmeric presence, comic timing and occasional air of possession by a baffled duckling endure).
