We're truly in a golden age of television - and the very best of it is being brought to us by women.
Hot on the heels of the messy successes of Fleabag and I May Destroy You comes Sky Atlantic's I Hate Suzie, the latest collaboration between Billie Piper and Lucy Prebble. The unapologetically wild and poignantly honest series follows Suzie Pickles (Piper), a star with her celebrity status edging towards its expiry date, who is now mostly remembered for role in a sci-fi cult classic. Having landed a new part, her life comes crashing down after explicit photos are leaked on the internet.
While the drama could have taken a preachy and pious approach, I Hate Suzie takes pains to present Pickles as a fallible and at times unlikeable figure - with human, recognisable flaws that us as viewers can all relate to in spite of Pickles' supposedly starry celebrity status.
From her explosive diarrhoea at the news of the photo leak, to her spontaneous singing about how much she hates the village she lives in and a 3am coke binge in a Birmingham hotel room, Pickles is far from polished and perfect. It’s something Leila Farzad, who plays Pickles’ agent Naomi, enjoyed about the series.
“It’s truthful and authentic,” she explained to Standard Online. “It’s about a dark ugly side of humanity that we don’t see enough. It’s being a bad mother, a bad friend. It’s being unapologetically bad at your life. Every human is flawed and we really lean into the weirdness. There’s a profound honesty in it that’s really excruciating to watch.
“I think celebrity still hasn’t been explored properly on screen. It’s this sort of glamorous, fabulous thing that we’re all striving towards somehow. This is showing you the ugly side, where your most personal, private self is intruded upon, and the vulnerability it makes you feel and the ramification of that behaviour. It’s delving into something unpalatable and ugly."
17 underrated series on Netflix and Now TV
Farzad, who has previously starred in ITV’s Innocent and Channel 4’s Man Down says her character is as equally as flawed Pickles, which is reflected in their realistic take on female friendship; a destructive, argumentative and chaotic coupling as opposed to the ladies-who-lunch BFFs popularised by Sex and the City.
“They’re two friends that have done everything together and grown up together, in each other’s pockets, but now they’re starting to question that person. It’s very tricky having long term friendships with people.
“Female friendships can often leave you stuck as you’re not allowed to evolve, and it’s brave to show a female friendship like this with all its flaws.”
But it’s not just the women in the series that are deeply troubled– Pickles’ husband Cob, played by Daniel Ings, is immediately unlikeable from the moment he’s on screen. Passive aggressive and unsupportive, his temper tantrum over the nude photo leak and his vicious questioning of Pickles in the aftermath is a clear depiction of the character’s toxic insecurities.
“It was pretty but there’s something quite liberating about going quite dark with him,” Ings explained. “There’s a lot about this character that a lot of men will relate to if they’re being honest about their darker selves.
“If I’m being honest, there’s elements of Cob that I related to, when I’ve not been at my best. I really try to get to grips with that toxic male attitude at trying to be a dominant force and the need to be a provider and the need to exert control, so I let that rage flag fly. I was interested to go to those dark places.”
Ings also highlighted that Cob goes through his own personal trauma in a similar fashion to the women in the series.
“For sure I felt sorry for him,” he said. “He is going through his own version of trauma here. But I think there’s a reckoning for Cob. He’s forced to reckon with the fact that he’s not an innocent bystander here. He’s not entirely a victim.
“A lot of the trauma is valid but the way that he deals with it at times is ugly. He struggles to take responsibility for the fact that this is an unhappy marriage. He’s not an out and out bad guy. He’s a good dad, and at times he’s a good husband. He can be charming and funny but there is a lot of darkness there, for sure.”
Working with Piper and Prebbles was an inspiring experience, Ings said.
“It’s a bit of a cliché to say but in this case it is 100 per cent true for me, when you work with someone like Billie, it does raise your game,” he explained.
“I was like, 'wow, she is so much better at acting than me'. It made me want to sit up. I learnt so much from working with her, she’s relentless and dogged in her pursuit of truth."
Farzad agreed. “Being in the presence of strong, nurturing women that wanted to tell the truth and be authentic and not give that sort of, like I said, the full polished version of what it is to be a woman in your late 30s was so liberating and empowering, and a real breath of fresh air actually.
“It was incredibly exciting. It's long overdue, I think It's not necessarily about what kind of trauma women feel, and more showing the entire picture of what women are like. And we are meant to be so many different things.
“We have all these coping mechanisms to get us through being, you know, parents, strong enough in the workplace and domestic and not domestic and moulding ourselves, according to how we think we should be.
“We throw all that away and say, no, we are unapologetically imperfect. There are bits in I Hate Suzie that will make people baulk, and its partly with seeing women act this way on screen - but it's also funny, and it does show how utterly bizarre and funny some situations can be that we get ourselves into that perhaps we haven't seen on the screen yet. And it's women navigating that. There’s no fear in it, so I think that's what's important.”
Ings added that he believes it’s about time that those who may have been previously locked out of creative conversations should be included.
“I’ll be honest, my preference is generally to work with women because it is quite a different experience,” he said. “Film sets can be quite a macho environment and that’s not always a toxic environment but filmmaking can lend itself to becoming a bit of a macho blood sport.
“What’s happening now is that opportunities are being given to people to tell their stories who have previously been locked out of the conversation. It has been historically a ‘jobs for the boys’ industry and what happens when you start saying to people ‘actually, maybe we shouldn’t have been locking you out of this conversation, we’re going to give you a chance to tell these stories.
“The proof is in the pudding. We’re giving opportunities to writers and directors of colour who have been historically locked out the conversation and now you’re seeing work which is much more exciting and varied and painful and difficult and brilliant. I think more needs to be done. People like Lucy Prebble are kicking down the doors, and I’m just happy to ride on the coattails of these talented women.”
I Hate Suzie starts tonight at 9pm on Sky Atlantic