Big Mood season 2 review – Nicola Coughlan’s hugely ambitious comedy becomes a farce | television

TThe second part of the title of Camilla Whitehill’s Channel 4 comedy-drama is a reference to mood disorders. Bipolar, to be precise—the condition her heroine Maggie was diagnosed with. The first part is a reference to almost everything else. Big Mood tackles big topics and chases big laughs. There are big adventures, big gestures, and big cameos. It’s an undeniable ambition, but does it all add up to something truly meaningful? It may be difficult to know.

The first series introduced Maggie in the midst of a manic episode: she has pestered her university into letting her give a speech in the hopes of seducing her ancient history teacher. This quickly led to a state of depression, as she attended her 30th birthday party without bathing and was on the verge of tears. This rollercoaster was caused by Maggie’s decision to stop taking her medication. She believed it hindered her creativity and career as a playwright. Eventually, she agreed to go back on lithium, only to suffer terrifying hallucinations and confusion – she had been poisoned by a faulty prescription given to her by an overworked psychiatrist.

As a depiction of bipolar disorder, Big Mood was extremely insightful and nuanced; Maggie’s inner hell is embodied flawlessly by Bridgerton and Derry Girls star Nicola Coughlan. However, it was immediately clear that the show’s interests were divided. He wanted it to be realistic and honest, but also wildly hilarious. It’s always encouraging to see art that survives the absurdity of mental illness without trivializing it, but I have to admit that Big Mood’s mixture of outlandish sitcom contrivances, self-aware evasion, and tasteless flack humor left me cold.

Then there was Big Mood’s other main concern: the relationship between Maggie and her best friend Eddie (It’s Lydia West’s Sin). The intensity of the duo’s dynamic seemed a bit unreal given their age, though it did raise compelling questions about the nature of friendship. Edie became resentful of the unbalanced nature of their support system, and when she finally faced some serious problems of her own, she felt abandoned by her best friend. Maggie had a legitimate excuse: she was suffering from blackout spells and being taunted by imaginary demon children. But Eddie didn’t know that, and fled from East London to California without saying goodbye.

Now Big Mood is back – or at least Maggie is back. Having recovered from lithium poisoning, she is now in the “age of the stable girl”; She uses retinol and Hello Fresh with a six-step morning routine codified in her notes app. However, she still pines for Eddie, who has been kept incommunicado for the past year. A mutual friend’s wedding raises the possibility of reconciliation, and as Maggie awaits the arrival of her former best friend, she is distracted by a ridiculously strict bridesmaid, a Florence Nightingale-inspired bridesmaid’s dress, and the pursuit of the bride’s secret husband who has arrived to blackmail the happy couple. But once these little adventures are over, the big conspiracy begins: Eddie is back under the control of a health expert named Whitney, who has already taken all of her money and now wants to obliterate the last vestiges of Eddie and Maggie’s relationship.

In other words, great mood is no longer about mood disorders. Maggie remains relatively poised despite a traumatic confrontation with her estranged father, a creative Mancunian comedian and complete anal star (a very convincing Robert Lindsay). Instead, we get a knock-down farce over a painstaking dissection of the initial rift between Eddie and Maggie. In an effort to reconcile, Maggie is focused on proving Whitney a fraud, even teaming up with Eddie’s friend Will—an incorrigibly nice man whom both women treat with utter contempt in a truly annoying way—to comprehensively annoy her.

It’s not an easy story to invest in. As a character, Edie originally seemed intelligent, sarcastic, and sensitive to bullshit: her fall for Whitney is not really traceable. Despite Coghlan’s sympathetic performance, Maggie is still devastated enough to justify Eddie’s initial decision to cut ties.

Of course, humor is subjective and so is charm: if you’re prone to getting caught up in millennial chaos, these will seem like quibbles. And it’s true that broad comedy sometimes gives way to substantial dramatic insights. But while the platonic romance between Eddie and Maggie may have been intoxicating in their youth, it now seems toxic. Maybe it’s time for everyone involved in this dysfunctional friendship to move on.