Latest news with #KatSadler
New York Times
08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Such Brave Girls' Is an Audacious and Hilarious British Comedy
The blistering British comedy 'Such Brave Girls,' on Hulu, centers on a dysfunctional family and features many of the archetypes one sees in a sadcom. But instead of slow poignancy and personal growth, 'Brave' is all about feral, filthy awfulness. It's hilarious and electrified, perfectly deranged. Kat Sadler created and stars in the show as Josie, the suicidal, closeted-but-also-not older sister whose biggest turn-on is being fawned over for how damaged she is. Billie (Lizzie Davidson, Sadler's real-life sister) is the boy-crazy — craaaaazy — golden child who sexts during her abortion. Josie and Billie always seem to get what the other wants: Josie has no use for the doting, useless man who pledges his love to her, whereas Billie would give anything to have her dirtbag show her a molecule of loyalty. Josie can barely interact with women she crushes on while Billie is unfazed by a brief fling with her doppelgänger and romantic rival. Their mom, Deb (Louise Brealey), openly loathes Josie when she isn't too busy fawning over her weird widower boyfriend, Dev (Paul Bazely). Family! The show is not for the prudish. But the vulgarity is part of the fun, part of the show's amped-up id. The characters here do and say cartoonishly monstrous things, especially about sex and intimacy, but there is truth inside their savagery. The desperation to be loved and understood can indeed outpace reason, so while the behaviors here are outlandish, they're not nonsense. The naughtiness is rich and coherent. In some ways, 'Brave' is a satire of the trauma comedy, and it uses similar beats and moments but does so in festive, warped ways. A doomed family camping trip goes, of course, poorly, and a tiff leads to Deb kicking a tree and screaming: 'We! Do! Not! Need! Catharsis!' The sisters gas each other up but with some of the worst advice imaginable, and the self-actualization moments come out tangled and grotesque. The raunch and audacity remind me of 'Peep Show' and of the Sharon Horgan comedy 'Pulling.' And 'Brave' shares with 'Fleabag' that 'Oh dang, this show is really going for it!' dazzle. To its huge credit, 'Brave' tenaciously resists sweetness, and yet its fallen world and all of its ostensibly unlikable characters add up to something pretty easy to love. Both six-episode seasons are available now.
Metro
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
BBC quietly adds second season of TV series fans hailed 'bizarrely dark'
Looking for something to do this weekend? Do you love dark comedies? If you answered yes to either of those questions, then the BBC may have the perfect comedy TV series for you. All episodes of the second season of the critically acclaimed Such Brave Girls – the first series has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes – are now available to stream on iPlayer. Created by Kat Sadler,Such Brave Girls has been described as 'a family sitcom about trauma' while Kat herself has said it's 'more about us being narcissistic losers who are pathetically obsessed with what people think about us'. The show tells the story of Deb (Kat), a single mother who lives with her two adult daughters, Billie and Josie, and we follow the trio as they deal with such theoretical issues as sexual identity, mental illness and toxic relationships. While that may not sound like a recipe for a laugh-out-loud comedy, the series is wildly popular with critics. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video Judy Berman of Time Magazine wrote that Such Brave Girls was 'dark, messy, and full of precisely the kind of pathos that keeps you laughing as you wince.' Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter was similarly enthusiastic, describing the series as a 'hilarious slice of family dysfunction, focusing on a trio of women whose only connection is their trauma'. It was Craig Mathieson of The Age who had the highest praise, however, describing the series as 'a contender come [2024's] end for the list of best new streaming shows.' Critics weren't the only ones caught in the show's spell. Christina Oviedo wrote in her Google review that the series was 'Hilarious, relatable, and the characters are so well thought out'. Meanwhile, Demi Wieringa wrote on Google that it was 'the funniest show I have ever watched.' Considering the series' charms – and the fact it won the scripted comedy category at the 2024 British Academy Television Awards -it's perhaps Of course, there was a lot of pressure (and opportunity) heading into the second season, something Kat was very aware of. 'I have them by my bed, the BAFTAs, and they watch me while I sleep' she told TheRolling Stone. 'I think, 'oh my God, how am I going to try and make something that's the same or if not better' because obviously you always want to be better as a writer.' 'It's made me feel like I can go even further,' she added. 'I can turn the dial up even more, and it's made me feel more excited and like maybe a bit more confident.' More Trending It turns out that she needn't have worried. Critics are loving this new season as much as the first. Hannah J Davies of The Guardian gave the series five stars and described it as 'knockout TV' while The Independent's Katie Rosseinsky gave it four stars and said it 'radiates an almost feral comic energy'. Such Brave Girls is available to stream now on BBC iPlayer. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. View More » MORE: Gary Lineker claims BBC should 'hold their heads in shame' for shelving Gaza documentary MORE: TV fans all say the same thing as the soaps are taken off air MORE: Comedian admits he 'nearly got into a punch-up' at Wimbledon
The Guardian
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Such Brave Girls season two review – this Bafta-winning comedy is startlingly brilliant
There's a scene early on in the first series of Such Brave Girls that sums the whole thing up nicely. Josie – a millennial not long out of a mental health crisis, now just in a general, all-encompassing life crisis – has helped her sister to bleach her hair. Unfortunately, she has neglected to tell Billie that the plastic bag she put over her head has left a massive, Shrek-green Asda logo on the dye job. Billie – who alternates between sweetly naive and absolutely petrifying, with little warning – lunges at Josie and smothers her new dress in ketchup, before threatening to kill herself. The girls' mother will later attempt to return said dress to the shop – stains and all – feigning tears as she tells the shop assistant how much debt she's in. Suffice to say, Such Brave Girls isn't a wholesome coming-of-age affair. It is, however, a brilliant, startlingly feral comedy, one which scooped the scripted comedy Bafta last year (previous winners include Derry Girls, This Country and Peep Show). The subject matter – suicide, abortion, financial ruin, deep-seated abandonment issues – sounds like the stuff of sadcoms. But what makes it stand out in a post-Waller-Bridge world is that it is an unashamed sitcom, with a regular cast and recurring gags. Think The Inbetweeners, if it had it been written by Julia Davis. It is, in fact, from the twisted mind of Kat Sadler, who plays Josie alongside her real-life sister Lizzie Davidson as Billie; the show, in particular the mental health and debt parts, are loosely based on their own lives. (There is an Inbetweeners connection, though: Simon Bird, AKA Will, is the director.) Along with Sadler and Davidson, Louise Brealey completes the troubled triad as their mum, Deb, who is just as – if not more – self-absorbed and unstable than her daughters (staunchly anti-therapy, at one point she declares that it is only 'for celebrities'). Broke thanks to a runaway husband and cosplaying as a widow, Deb pins all her hopes on rich boyfriend Dev (Paul Bazely), 'our Willy Wonka ticket out of fucking hell' and an actual widower. Billie, meanwhile, is both impressively nonchalant – she pitches up at an abortion clinic in the witch's outfit from her job at Kidz Cauldron – and dangerously obsessed with on-off boyfriend Nicky (Sam Buchanan). If Billie often feels like Blanche DuBois for the TikTok generation, Josie is a more muted presence. Controlled by her sister, mother and a boyfriend she can't stand (because she's secretly queer), she is often afforded only a supporting role in her own life story. Series two arrives with only a smattering of preview episodes and a spoiler list that makes writing about it feel like navigating a hallway blocked by lasers. What I can say, though, is that it's excellent, and that Josie is still completely overpowered: episode one begins with Deb and Billie forcibly removing her from an art school lecture and sticking a bag over her head to get her to comply with their latest scheme. Still repulsed by the idea of having any sort of sexual contact with Seb (Freddie Meredith), Josie becomes fixated on a fellow student, a girl named Charlie. What unfolds takes us to even darker places than series one. Sadler's performance during Josie's long-awaited NHS mental health assessment, in particular, is at once terrifyingly unpredictable and a complete hoot. Billie says of her sister's unconvincing display of sanity: 'Your mouth's doing the right thing, but your eyes are trying to call the Samaritans.' Not that she is doing much better, having embarked on an inadvisable affair with an older man named Graham (he told her he wasn't married, she told him she was 15), launching herself at him at every opportunity then rebranding herself as a sugar baby when he pays her to leave him alone. Deb's mental state is disintegrating, too, along with her finances, and we see her careening to the supermarket on a scooter, card declined at the till. The rest of the cast remain just as compellingly pathetic, and the decision to make Seb and Dev co-workers at a banal, Wernham Hogg-esque office is a neat trick to guarantee enough screen time for both. Such Brave Girls won't be to everyone's tastes. In fact, there are plenty of people I can imagine not rolling about at lines like 'I heard she gets a smear test every week just so someone has to look at her vagina', or revelling in the sheer lack of empathy that every single character here has for one another. But if you like your comedy scary, lairy and perfectly portioned, it is a total knockout. Josie is pretty brave, but Sadler is even braver. Such Brave Girls aired on BBC Three and is on iPlayer now
Telegraph
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Gen Z might relate to these BBC comedy characters, but others will find them slappable
Not many TV comedies risk making jokes about abortion, so we can at least say that Such Brave Girls (BBC Three) is fearless. Sisters Josie and Billie are discussing Billie's new boyfriend. 'Are you using condoms with this one?' asks Josie. 'Or will we be adding more of your offspring to the nursery in the sky?' If you watched series one, you may remember Billie going to an abortion clinic dressed as a witch. Series creator and star, Kat Sadler, is also unafraid to tackle mental-health issues, from chronic anxiety to thoughts of suicide. The first series won two Baftas, including best scripted comedy, and it has a lot of fans who adore its brutal honesty and snappily delivered take on life. It's well done, but I just can't make myself love it. I think it's because, while Gen Z viewers might hard relate to the two main characters, they just seem to me to be quite slappable. Josie (Sadler) is terminally depressed and Billie (Lizzie Davidson, Sadler's real-life sister) is a spoilt idiot. They live with their equally self-absorbed mother, Deb (Louise Brealey) and the family are nothing if not frank with one another. Episode one of the new series kicks off with Josie miserably marrying the boyfriend she doesn't like. 'Now shut up, have some Prosecco and try not to poison this wedding with your personality,' says Deb, who makes no secret of Josie being her least favourite daughter. Josie must stick at the marriage because her new husband is the only person bringing in any household income, Deb explains: 'You laying on your back and thinking of England is a noble sacrifice for our mortgage.' These lines are funnier on screen than they are written down. Deb is determined to claw her way out of poverty and has set her sights on wedding Dev (Paul Bazely), because he has a nice detached house. While Josie endures her new husband and develops an unrequited crush on an art student, Billie embarks on an affair with a married, middle-aged man (The Bay 's Daniel Ryan). 'He's probably about 70 but he could be a 50-year-old that's really tired,' she muses. I did laugh at that line. Younger viewers probably just winced in sympathy.
Graziadaily
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Graziadaily
Kat Sadler And Lizzie Davidson On Series Two Of Such Brave Girls
Kat Sadler has only been recognised in public three times. The first time was by a man behind the till at H&M, and the second was on New Year's Eve when a drunk girl kindly told her, 'I loved your show, but my friends couldn't get through it.' The third was with her sister, co-star and co-conspirator, Lizzie Davidson, after they wrapped filming for season two of their super-hit, Such Brave Girls, in Liverpool. 'It was our Christmas Day!' they tell me in unison. Given that series one picked up the BAFTA for Scripted Comedy last year, as well as the not-to-be-scoffed-at Craft Award for Emerging Talent: Fiction, their relative anonymity is a surprise. With a belter of a second series out on BBC Three and iPlayer on 3 July, it won't last much longer either. Billie (Lizzie Davidson), Deb (Louise Brealey) and Josie (Kat Sadler) in series two. (Photo: BBC) Such Brave Girls is a self-described 'trauma sit-com', but it passes as a black comedy too. It follows the lives of Josie (Sadler), Billie (Davidson) and their mum Deb (Louise Brealey), a highly dysfunctional trio desperate to find love and financial security. They just can't seem to do either very successfully. The first series ended with Josie, who is gay, on the phone to a crisis line as she walks through the door to find her on-off schmuck of a boyfriend Seb on one knee asking to marry her. The person on the end of the phone asks, 'Are you having suicidal thoughts?', Josie says 'yes', and the rest is material for series two. The truth is Sadler and Davidson (the sisters have different surnames because Kat Sadler is a stage name) are at the helm of one of the most exciting British comedies in years. Never mind the fact it's 'female led' or that it injects comedy into dark themes like depression, abortion and narcissism with aplomb, it's also just really funny. Of course, it helps that the sisters are just as funny and dynamic in real life. We meet at a café in Covent Garden to discuss the hotly anticipated second series. Sadler, who wrote and created the show, says Such Brave Girls nearly started out as a drama. 'I was writing from an authentic place of trauma and part of me thinks I started writing a comedy and then it became a drama. It was like squeezing a spot, I needed to get all the trauma onto the page and turn it into a drama and then take off that layer and be left with a comedy.' 'You always wanted it to be a sitcom,' Davidson chimes in. 'You don't really see sitcoms anymore. We grew up watching sitcoms and they were always our favourite shows. You can just click onto any episode, and you don't need to know any context and just have a good, old laugh.' It's a job well done then. The first series was met with widespread critical acclaim – including a four-star rave review from The Guardian and a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes – even if the sisters haven't been catapulted into fame just yet. Part of the show's success is their fine-tuned understanding of what makes something funny. 'Our mum is very funny,' Sadler tells me. 'She's very acerbic. I think that's made us quite sharp with each other.' Davidson interjects: 'We're super rude.' 'We're just always taking the piss out of each other,' the show's creator goes on. 'There's no dignity in the house.' Something that evidently lends itself to collaborative work. 'I get the first read which is always amazing,' says Davidson. 'We kind of go through every line and I tell her if it's too smart or too written and we tweak it together.' 'It's really frustrating because Lizzie will say something that just unlocks an episode,' her sister adds. 'She'll have the distance to say something and it's so annoying that I didn't think of it. They're always the best things.' The two sisters in series two of Such Brave Girls. (Photo: BBC) As audiences will see from series two, there is as much comedy in the stage directions as there is in the script. 'I always think about the crew and everyone who has to read it,' Sadler explains, 'it's not just us acting. I think 'what can I give them that's a bit of fun'.' From their descriptions of the set, it sounds as though there are definitely worse places to work, especially with The Inbetweeners stalwart Simon Bird on board as director. 'He's the loveliest,' offers Sadler. 'And he's a great advocate. He's so aligned with our sense of humour. We really trust him.' It also helps that they have a formidable ensemble cast, including Benidorm 's Paul Bazley and comic actor Freddie Meredith. 'We wanted people who weren't from a comedy background who had just done straight acting because playing it with truth always makes it so much funnier,' as Davidson puts it. 'The show is so outlandish and hit or miss, so a straight performance of a funny line feels more real.' Despite having a comedy giant in the production team and a hit debut series under their belts, Davidson and Sadler are still very much in the throes of imposter syndrome. 'It was a big risk for Kat to take me on,' suggests Davidson, who was still working as Princess Fiona at Shrek's Adventure on London's Southbank after the first series aired. 'The BBC must have been like, 'she's not done anything before, that's your sister, it's a no.'' Sadler was working as a standup and comedy writer before the series was greenlit, making her slightly more 'qualified' but just as modest. 'They must have thought that about me!' she replies. 'I'd done a bit of standup and was mainly a writer. I'm sure they looked at both of us and were like, 'hmm, two newbies who have not done anything before.'' How, then, did they grab the commissioners' attention? Just as fans of Josie and Billie's irreverent humour might expect. They recorded a video of themselves and attached it to their pitch saying, 'You have to commission it or we're going to kill ourselves.' Well, it worked. They went on to shoot a pilot and then the first series, with a second series confirmed shortly after series one hit our screens. 'You think it's going to be a champagne pop, we're going to The Ritz, come on!' quipped Davidson, 'but we were completely silent, completely numb [when series two was confirmed].' For her at least, the shock quickly turned into unadulterated excitement. 'Anyone who's coming over, it's on in the background,' Davidson beams. Meanwhile Sadler hasn't watched the show back since the final edit. There was definitely a case of 'second album syndrome' with series two, they both admit. 'It's wanting to give people what they're hoping for but not wanting to try to be outrageous,' says Sadler. 'But we pushed it more this series and we're dealing with some bigger stuff.' 'Yeah, there's bigger breakdowns, bigger breakups, bigger boundaries being pushed,' echoes Davidson. 'Our tagline for this series is: 'Forgive us, please.' Forgive us for what we're about to say.' Bigger risks, bigger rewards? I reckon so. Series two is undoubtedly braver and more confident than the first, daring its audience to sit in the discomfort, lean in and laugh. My advice to the sisters, not that they need it, is to go to a shopping centre and go up and down the escalator as many times as they can. They won't be able to unrecognised for much longer. Such Brave Girls series two is available to watch on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer from 3 July. Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, working across entertainment, TV and news. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things pop culture for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow with equal respect).
