In praise of: British Female TV Series Showrunners: Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Sharon Horgan, etc

I'm under the impressions that UK seems to have a much better track record of fostering and promoting female talent, particularly comedy talent, than the US. Huge fan of all the shows by both of these women (PWB has Crashing, Fleabag, and Killing Eve; Sharon Horgan has Catastrophe, Motherland, Pulling...what else?). Basically creating this thread because I just wrapped up Catastrophe here this weekend (which was excellent, if not quite as good as previous series) and then binged almost all of Motherland last night, and now looking for other similar things I may have overlooked.

Tangent, but worth checking out the Graham Norton ep with PW-B. She's a quick-witted hoot.

sharon horgan not british iirc

Not Divorce: Sharon Horgan was allowed to pick the showrunner for the first season, then SJP fired everyone, put in a showrunner from Sex & the City, and everything that was appealing about the first season disappeared.

x-post: Irish passport, been in London for much of her life.

she was born in England and her dad’s from New Zealand

I didn't realize that about Divorce (actually I didn't know she was even involved until last week; I'd avoided it though I heard the first season was good). Is she not involved with the second season at all?

Just thought about Julia Davis as well.

I think that she had some contractual obligations into the second season, but she also started publicly saying "it's not my show" around that time as well. She was personally close to a lot of the writing staff that SJP had canned.

Good to see people with differing opinions on what Horgan herself thinks.
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/sharon-horgan-it-gets-boring-saying-i-m-irish-actually-1.3409035

People? The dude who started the thread is alone here on that point.

Oh sorry, must have misinterpreted the “born in England, father is not Irish” post as meaning something else entirely.

Nah, I thought you were lumping me in with them, and didn't notice that sic jumped in with wrongness. Oops!

Well, no, I'm taking that back again -- "born in England, father from New Zealand" is factually true and doesn't add up to not Irish, let alone British.

i took akm thread title as reference to british tv tbf

Same here.

Is female also a reference to the shows themselves then?

I keep thinking there must be loads of these but it's still fairly rare.
Probably not ILX fodder, and I guess not classed as a 'showrunner' but Jo Brand co-wrote Damned and Getting On.

On a similar tip, there's always Jennifer Saunders with Ab Fab as well.

I was adding to TWU’s note, not suddenly doing a volte-face on years of telling Americans here that other countries actually exist

(deleted a "but still" when we x-posted)

"i took akm thread title as reference to british tv tbf"

yes. apologies.

While we're being pedantic about the thread title, British TV series' don't always have 'showrunners' in the American sense. Fleabag was written entirely by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Catastophe was co-written by its two leads.

I don't know what a showrunner is but, unlike UK TV series, (successful) American series tend to run for years and years and have dozens of writers.

Ty for clarifying akm & apologies for dragging the thread off topic.

I would mention Lisa McGee here, though again Irish, because Derry Girls is great (second series even better so far), although I didn’t care for London Irish at all.

Chewing Gum (Michaela Coel) was also very good, but I do t know if she has anything more in the works writing-wise?

I forgot about Chewing Gum! Yes wonder what happened to her.

She’s acting in quite a few things, so might be a while before she writes again?

Michaela Cole also here for Chewing Gum

(Bah xp on phone - and yes to Lisa McGee as well)

a much better track record of fostering and promoting female talent, particularly comedy talent

I keep thinking there must be loads of these but it's still fairly rare.

(akm's 1-and-a-bit British doesn't fully overwhelm Tina Fey and Lizz Winstead and Merrill Markoe and Shonda Rhimes and Rebecca Bloom and Aline Brosh-McKenna and Mindy Kaling and Frankie #cancelled Shaw and Jenji Kohan and Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch and Tracey Wigfield and Jill Soloway (ex) and Kenya Barris and Issa Rae and Jenni Konner and Lena Dunham and Nanatchka Khan and Marti Noxon and Jane Espenson and Andrea Savage and Robin Schiff and Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson and Amy Schumer and Amy Sedaris and Amy Poehler and Amy Sherman-Palladino and Marta Kauffman, either)

I don't know what a showrunner is

I thought it was a song by the knack

Daisy May Cooper of This Country?

I regret to inform you that Miranda Hart probably belongs here too.

sally wainwright

Caroline Aherne, sort of

Nira Park, a bit

Jessica Stevenson, kinda but not really

Vicky Pile, properly

mrs brown

lol

lock thread until akm catches up on her oeuvre

i was gonna write this whole long post about how cool the pedantry is upthread instead of like actually recommending cool stuff instead but then i re-read the original post, and, holy shit, PW-B made killing eve?! i guess i gotta watch it now!

sally wainwright

yes, though ylmv

how cool the pedantry is upthread instead of

stfu, Bolivian (fyi W-B only did the first series of Killing Eve, not the upcoming one)

I found KE unwatchable and love Fleabag.

fyi thread title says praise and I think you’ll find that’s half criticism

people who like it really do like it, fwiw.

and that was an xpost to myself not a response to wins.

yeah me too i loved Fleabag 1, but couldn't stand KE, the whole vibe of it was all over the place.

i was more ambivalent on KE but the vibe certainly is "all over the place".

Breaking hearts. Killing Eve is fantastic. I want to rewatch it again soon.

Julia Davis should prob be mentioned here

and after hitting post i see she was by akm 6 hours ago

This thread is a bit “women of rock” but while we’re at it, Annie Griffin’s Book Group - the dvd is in every charity shop ever, and there’s a great future-famous cast

(I preferred S2 of Divorce - thought it worked better as a mostly cosy comedy than a mostly dark one.)

FW-B I think wrote about half the episodes of the first series of Killing Eve, although it was very much promoted as her thing.

Second series of Fleabag proving much stronger than the first IMO.

The first two and the last one, crucially - curious if the new head writer will do the same.

Seconding Book Group, especially the first series

the Sharon Horgan stuff is better when she's in it. i.e. Motherhood, Women On The Verge were just kind of ok imo

One thing about Derry Girls is that it has a female music supervisor who absolutely 100% nailed what they would have been listening to at the time. It's set bang in the middle of the 90s and the music is all Urban Cookie Collective and Whigfield and Shabba Ranks, which is absolutely what they would have been listening to. Don't want to generalise but I'm pretty sure a dude (and for that matter a lot of women) would have filled the soundtrack with early Britpop and lost the feeling of authenticity.

can't stand Derry Girls but that is totally otm

can't stand it either.

Dead Boss is the overlooked Sharon Horgan.

dead boss is impossible to locate in the US...not on streaming, hard to find torrentz of the full series.

I keep trying to start Derry Girls but can't get past the first episode. Maybe it's just not meant to be.

I was about to say Sex Education but i think that's a netflix show.

Anyone caught Michaela Coel's new thing "I May Destroy You"? TW: sexual assault.
Only 2 eps have been on so far but it is fun (going out!! remember that?), intriguing, yet within this sort of bubble of absolute looming horror. I'd read a lot about it beforehand and almost wish I hadn't. I can't tell if the fear is baked in to the writing, or based within most women's wariness on realising you can't remember chunks of time, or more just informed by what I've read.

streaming in the US or is this something I have to go torrent?

oh, there it is on HBO.

Julia Davis should prob be mentioned here

― ( ͡☉ ͜ʖ ͡☉) (jim in vancouver), Monday, March 18, 2019 7:15 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ok This Way Up (ch4, Hulu) was excellent. No news of a second series though? I really hope it wasn't cancelled. I preferred it by some margin to Motherland and I think Women on the Verge which I honestly can't remember if I watched. Aisling Bea was really wonderful in it.

Michaela Coel FTW.

I've just caught up with episode 6 of I May Destroy You (flashback with teen Theo) and that is some rollercoaster.

<<<SPOILERS>>>
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Can someone confirm, we are supposed to believe Theo was never actually sexually abused in any way and is using the survivors' group in a manipulative way? Another type of dishonestly sneaking 'consent', but is that how you read it?