I’ve made huge progress,” concluded the heroine of GameFace (E4). “Really turned a corner. One biscuit and I put the packet back in the cupboard. I feel like some sort of wizard.” For someone who spends her weekend comfort-eating M&S profiteroles straight from the tub, this was more of an achievement than it sounds.
As this surprise gem of a sitcom’s debut series came to an end, Marcella (writer and star Roisin Conaty) was guilt-ridden after falling into bed with her ex, Simon (Dustin Demri-Burns).
Haunted by hilariously graphic sex flashbacks from the night before, she had to face a wholesome daytime date with her driving instructor Jon (Damien Molony).
It was therefore a small mercy when Marcella was urgently called away because her drug-addicted brother Billy (Dylan Edwards) decided to “stage his own intervention”. Family and friends duly gathered for a cathartic session of revelations, recriminations, conches, Cadbury’s Chocolate Fingers and inappropriate singing. Frankly, what more could you want from a series finale? This episode even threw in some alpacas and a kebab-eating gay cat.
Out of nowhere, GameFace stealthily snuck up to become this year’s best new homegrown sitcom. It’s about “navigating thirtysomething life when you're underprepared but somehow staying afloat”. A tragicomic portrayal of a woman’s chaotic life which miraculously managed to make debt, depression and loneliness laugh-aloud funny.
So far, so Fleabag. However, GameFace certainly shouldn’t be written off as a copycat of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Bafta-winning comedy. For a start, it actually pre-dates Fleabag: its pilot episode was screened two years before Fleabag even aired but bafflingly, it took three years to go from pilot to full series, during which time Fleabag somewhat stole its thunder.
GameFace is also grittier and grubbier, less theatrical and middle-class. Its messy heroine was all push-up bras, peroxide hair, Spanx and boozy breath. If anything, it bore more of a tonal resemblance to Sharon Horgan’s cult co-creations, Pulling and Catastrophe.
Part of GameFace’s delight was that nobody expected much when it launched, due to Conaty’s screen ubiquity. Along with fellow stand-ups Romesh Ranganathan and Rob Beckett (together, they could be called “the three Rs”), she seems to pop up on every panel show going. Hence her accomplished creation came as an unexpected treat. It was rude, raw and darkly funny but also big-hearted and slyly romantic. With its daydream sequences and self-deprecating flashbacks, it was smart and stylishly shot. It heralded Conaty’s arrival as a major talent.
She plays Marcella (Conaty’s real-life middle name), an actress who hasn’t had a part in four years, so is paying the rent on her flatshare by office temping and playing fairy princesses at children’s parties – usually with a raging hangover. She’s single, £28K in debt and still heartbroken by the ex who dumped her after 12 years. “And I’ve got fat hands,” she adds for good measure.
During this six-part series, she had to deal with a rooftop suicide case, her ex’s new wife, his mother’s funeral and her brother’s return from rehab. When her life coach (Marcella’s mother bought the sessions for her birthday on a Groupon deal) asked how she deals with stress, Marcella shrugged: “The trinity: carbs, fags, wine.”
She drunk-texted, stole loo roll from pubs and kept forgetting her driving lessons. She rubbed onions on her eyes to make herself cry for an audition. The script combined contemporary references (Instagram, Isil, TED Talks, Tinder) with industrial strength swearing.
The supporting cast was excellent: Green Wing’s Karl Theobald as Marcella’s ineffectual life coach, Francis Magee as her splenetically shouty dad and Father Ted’s Pauline McLynn as her overbearing mother, who delivered a powerhouse speech in this finale.
Extra laughs came from the eccentric gallery of minor characters: her conspiracy nut neighbour who refuses to take in Amazon parcels; her flatmate’s “brocialist” boyfriend, prattling about Corbyn’s unelectability; her one-night stand who’d somehow never seen Friends and ended up watching it for the first time (“Ha ha! The cat is smelly!”).
So how about that bold claim that GameFace is 2017’s best new homegrown sitcom? Well, its only serious rivals have been Mitchell and Webb’s Back, parenting satire Motherland and rural mockumentary This Country. GameFace arguably out-laughed and out-charmed them all. It even ended on a sweetly optimistic note. Let’s hope the second series doesn’t take another three years.
