It is difficult not to be charmed by Daisy Haggard's portrayal of Miri, a recently released prisoner for a "murder" committed 18 years before. And at the end of the first episode it is difficult to not be excited at finding what appears to be a genuinely new premise for a comedy series. Unfortunately this strong start only made it all the more disappointing when the series degenerated rapidly into a string of cliches, gross improbabilities and characterizations too unreal to be credible.
Standing back and looking objectively it seems to me the root of Back to Life's (BTL's) problem is its structure. There is a reason that the majority of comedies are sitcoms, long running series of individual episodes, each of which has its own self-contained story. It is of course possible to have shorter comedies series such as "The office", "Flight of the Concords" or "The Detectorists" but again while these may have their own overarching story that links the episodes together, each episode also has its own self-contained story. Compared to these standard comedy formats BTL is an anomaly. On the one hand it is supposed to be a comedy but on the other it is also a "who dun it", and while the combination of the two is an interesting and brave idea in my opinion this combination is just never going to work. A thriller is a thriller and a comedy is comedy. Yes it is possible to have a black comedy such as "Killing Eve" or "Lock stock and two smoking Barrels". But BTL is not a black comedy it is essentially two incompatible concepts unnaturally grafted together which makes it very difficult to be belly laughing at bizarre and unreal characters one moment then deadly serious with supposedly real characters and situations the next. It is a bad case of schizophrenia.
To be honest, had it not been for the fact that I was watching this with another person I would have given up at the end of the second episode. Up to then I had absolutely no expectation that the whole murder thing was going to be a recurring theme and was simply expecting the characters to develop. The initial premise, of a "killer" being released back into society is an interesting one but one that palls very, very quickly - there are only so many times (about two) you can show Miri being rejected by society and find it even vaguely amusing. After 2 episodes the whole "Miri rejection" thing became simply a substitute for the time honored "catch phrase" - something that reliably happens at least once an episode and which everyone for some reason is supposed to find funny.
No one expects everything in television to be realistic, especially not in a comedy. But even by these relaxed standards of reality the whole premise of BTL stretches credibly well beyond breaking point. Sorry but it is just not credible that a schoolgirl would have been convicted of murder at all, let alone jailed for 18 years, for what must have clearly at the time been regarded as an accident. Sorry, I know there are some crazy people out there, but I simply refuse to believe we live in a world where people are as consistently horrible as the ones shown in BTL and who, without exception, hurl abuse, paint rude messages on walls, send obscene parcels, paste posters, throw rubbish, etc, etc as they do here. Yet the entire premise of the series relies on that very fact. It is all just a house of cards.
Normally in a comedy series you have at least a few "straight guys". Yes, Seinfeld has its Kramer and friends has its Phoebe but generally speaking most characters are at least not too far away from someone we might all know in reality. In BTL EVERYONE is a whack job, except, ironically, Miri herself. Mandy is a nutter, Miri's ex is a nutter, the woman next door is a nutter, the policewoman is a nutter, Miri's parents start normally and then become nutters, the fish and chip man turns out to be a nutter, the investigator is a nutter, the checkout kid, the entire expletive hurling, rubbish hurling community are nutters. And incredibly, against this ridiculous unrealistic backdrop we are supposed to care about actual, real things such as the parent's relationship and who really did kill Lara. Really? And the whole resolution of why Lara was killed and why that was not established in 5 minutes at the time of death when seemingly everyone knew. Ridiculous.
Call me a prude but I didn't need to hear all the swearing, which is probably the most intensive and obnoxious I have ever heard in any television program, period. There was a time, about 30 years ago, when the appearance of a swear word was, for some reason I never understood, supposed to be funny. It was generally regarded as the sign of a program in desperation trying to make up for a lack of actual humor and brings zero credit to the writers/makers of BTL.
In short, some spectacular talent, and some genuine moments of charm, ultimately undermined by the one-trick premise of Miri being continually abused and by a structure that could not support it.
Standing back and looking objectively it seems to me the root of Back to Life's (BTL's) problem is its structure. There is a reason that the majority of comedies are sitcoms, long running series of individual episodes, each of which has its own self-contained story. It is of course possible to have shorter comedies series such as "The office", "Flight of the Concords" or "The Detectorists" but again while these may have their own overarching story that links the episodes together, each episode also has its own self-contained story. Compared to these standard comedy formats BTL is an anomaly. On the one hand it is supposed to be a comedy but on the other it is also a "who dun it", and while the combination of the two is an interesting and brave idea in my opinion this combination is just never going to work. A thriller is a thriller and a comedy is comedy. Yes it is possible to have a black comedy such as "Killing Eve" or "Lock stock and two smoking Barrels". But BTL is not a black comedy it is essentially two incompatible concepts unnaturally grafted together which makes it very difficult to be belly laughing at bizarre and unreal characters one moment then deadly serious with supposedly real characters and situations the next. It is a bad case of schizophrenia.
To be honest, had it not been for the fact that I was watching this with another person I would have given up at the end of the second episode. Up to then I had absolutely no expectation that the whole murder thing was going to be a recurring theme and was simply expecting the characters to develop. The initial premise, of a "killer" being released back into society is an interesting one but one that palls very, very quickly - there are only so many times (about two) you can show Miri being rejected by society and find it even vaguely amusing. After 2 episodes the whole "Miri rejection" thing became simply a substitute for the time honored "catch phrase" - something that reliably happens at least once an episode and which everyone for some reason is supposed to find funny.
No one expects everything in television to be realistic, especially not in a comedy. But even by these relaxed standards of reality the whole premise of BTL stretches credibly well beyond breaking point. Sorry but it is just not credible that a schoolgirl would have been convicted of murder at all, let alone jailed for 18 years, for what must have clearly at the time been regarded as an accident. Sorry, I know there are some crazy people out there, but I simply refuse to believe we live in a world where people are as consistently horrible as the ones shown in BTL and who, without exception, hurl abuse, paint rude messages on walls, send obscene parcels, paste posters, throw rubbish, etc, etc as they do here. Yet the entire premise of the series relies on that very fact. It is all just a house of cards.
Normally in a comedy series you have at least a few "straight guys". Yes, Seinfeld has its Kramer and friends has its Phoebe but generally speaking most characters are at least not too far away from someone we might all know in reality. In BTL EVERYONE is a whack job, except, ironically, Miri herself. Mandy is a nutter, Miri's ex is a nutter, the woman next door is a nutter, the policewoman is a nutter, Miri's parents start normally and then become nutters, the fish and chip man turns out to be a nutter, the investigator is a nutter, the checkout kid, the entire expletive hurling, rubbish hurling community are nutters. And incredibly, against this ridiculous unrealistic backdrop we are supposed to care about actual, real things such as the parent's relationship and who really did kill Lara. Really? And the whole resolution of why Lara was killed and why that was not established in 5 minutes at the time of death when seemingly everyone knew. Ridiculous.
Call me a prude but I didn't need to hear all the swearing, which is probably the most intensive and obnoxious I have ever heard in any television program, period. There was a time, about 30 years ago, when the appearance of a swear word was, for some reason I never understood, supposed to be funny. It was generally regarded as the sign of a program in desperation trying to make up for a lack of actual humor and brings zero credit to the writers/makers of BTL.
In short, some spectacular talent, and some genuine moments of charm, ultimately undermined by the one-trick premise of Miri being continually abused and by a structure that could not support it.