Not your typical menopause drama
Bridget Christie, who wrote, directed, and stars in The Change, has crafted a mid-life drama unlike anything you’ve ever seen
The Change
SBS
Premieres Monday September 18, SBS On Demand. Double episodes air weekly on SBS Viceland on Monday from 9.25pm
Bridget Christie, who wrote, directed, and stars in The Change, has crafted a mid-life drama unlike anything you’ve ever seen. It’s menopause by way of David Lynch. Christie plays Linda, a put-upon supermarket worker with two brat teenagers, and one loving albeit useless lump of her husband. Linda has spent her entire married life secretly keeping a ledger, in which she meticulously records every minute and second she has spent doing “invisible” domestic labour. Shortly after her 50th birthday (which she organised, and for which her husband naturally got all the credit), she is diagnosed with menopause. She snaps, and dusts off her motorbike and heads to the Forest of Dean to search for a time capsule she buried in a tree trunk as a child, and to reclaim the 44,000 minutes of her life that she has spent doing thankless chores. She winds up in a tight-knit community, filled with kooks like the Eel sisters (Monica Doland and Susan Lynch) who run a café that has “proudly” served eels and mash to men since the 19th century; Jerome Flynn’s (Game of Thrones) Pig Man, who hers orphaned wild truffle pigs; Tanya Moodie’s mysterious feminist radio host; and Jim Howick’s Verderer, a local DJ who rages against “feminazis” (you know the type).
David Lynch: The Art Life
Binge
Speaking of David Lynch, this documentary, co-directed by Rick Barnes, Olivia Neergaard-Holm, and Jon Nguyen, is about as close as we‘ll ever get to the notoriously guarded artist. It is less concerned with Lynch, the filmmaker, and more interested in delving into his childhood. The documentary tracks his idyllic youth in Idaho, a challenging phase after a family move to Virginia, and his time at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, a city he says will “suck your happiness away and fill you with sadness and fear.” For those who have read (or even better, listened to) his memoir, Room to Dream, some of this is familiar territory. But there is still a pleasure to be found in watching Lynch smoke cigarettes, paint, and tell stories in his cartoonishly flat Voice. There’s a particularly funny-sad story of him showing his father his collection of decomposing fruit and animals, only for his dad to tell him he shouldn’t have children.
This Fool
Disney+
Comedian Chris Estrada created and stars in this tender, ribald comedy set in the Latin American community of South Central Los Angeles. Estrada plays Julio, a 30-year-old who still lives at home with his mother and grandmother. He’s the kind of buttoned-up wimp who is so afraid of confrontation that he’d rather mow his lawn than ask a group of shady-looking men to move a car that is blocking his driveway. Julio works as a caseworker at a nonprofit, Hugs Not Thugs, that helps recently incarcerated people readjust to life outside of prison. Luis (Frankie Quiñones), the family’s charismatic dark horse, has just been released from a lengthy prison stint, and Julio takes him on as a case. The core of this show revolves around their dynamic — Luis is a macho instigator, with a mindset “stuck in 2005” that doesn’t align with contemporary life, and Julio perpetually bears the brunt of his older cousin‘s antics. There’s also Michael Imperioli, playing an exaggerated version of himself as the unbalanced idealist Minister Payne, who runs Hugs Not Thugs. This is a lighthearted comedy with enough pathos to keep it interesting.
Freaks and Geeks
Stan
The ’90s were a gold rush for savvy teen TV shows: Dawson’s Creek, My So-Called Life, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to name a few. Freaks and Geeks, a comedy about the lives of the burnouts and nerds of a Michigan high school circa 1980, stood above the rest. Although critically adored from the get-go, it was ignored by the mainstream and tragically cancelled after one perfect season. Where Dawson’s Creek relied on melodrama, and Buffy and Charmed on hocus-pocus, the drama in Freaks and Geeks was low stakes. Instead, creators — and future megaproducers — Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) and Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Superbad, basically every hit comedy of the 2000s) turned the ritual humiliations of teenagehood into a compelling coming-of-age story, portraying growing pains through the eyes of siblings Lindsay (Linda Cardellini) and Sam Weir (John Francis Daley). Lindsay is a maths maven who somehow falls in with the “freaks,” a bunch of deadhead slackers; and Sam is a picked-on ”geek” content spending his time watching old Steve Martin comedies and playing Dungeons and Dragons with his two best friends — a bonus, Francis Daley would go on to direct this year’s live-action D&D film. The cast of then-unknowns would all go on to become superstars like Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jason Segel, Busy Philipps, Lizzy Caplan, and Martin Starr.
Cracker
Britbox
While ’90s America was churning out teen fare, the British were doing what they do best: crime dramas. Jimmy McGovern’s heavy-duty Cracker stars Robbie Coltrane as Dr Edward “Fitz” Fitzgerald, a deeply flawed criminal psychiatrist. He’s brilliant at his job, but his personal life has gone to the dogs. Fitz is an arrogant, stroppy, gambling addict, and Coltrane’s embodiment is nothing short of extraordinary. The crimes in this show, which is set in 1990s Manchester, are brutal and shocking. Yet, in the hands of McGovern, one of TV’s best writers, they serve as a lens through which to explore the profound undercurrents of grief, guilt, and injustice simmering within the post-Thatcher working class milieu.