Binge-r #207: The Duchess + I Hate Suzie

Mother Superior: Katherine Ryan (Katherine) in The Duchess

THE DUCHESS S1

Streaming Service: Netflix

Availability: All six episodes now streaming

As a stand-up star transitioning to her own sitcom, long-time Canadian-in-London comic Katherine Ryan has the usual ambitions with a few twists – some of which are welcome, while others are complications. As her two Netflix stand-up specials make clear, Ryan can take a flamethrower to propriety, and that extends to her fictional self. The fictional Katherine is a financially secure single mother raising with irreverent love her 10-year-old daughter, Olive (Kate Byrne), while dealing with her eccentric former partner, faded boy band rebel turned conspiracy theorist Shep (Rory Keenan, channelling Robbie Williams after too much YouTube), and her Saturday night squeeze, level-headed Australian dentist Evan (Steen Raskopolouos), who wants to upgrade to a relationship.

At school drop-off Katherine insults and provokes a pompous mother whose daughter has been mean to Olive, exchanges filthy advice with her friend Bev (Michelle de Swarte), and trades insults with the unapologetic Shep. Depending on your limits, the egregious dismissals are sooner or later going to cross the boundary between unfiltered humour and flat-out offensive. But Ryan has sketched some interesting contradictions beneath the punchlines – Katherine is a good if unconventional mother who has raised a terrific child, and the 33-year-old is genuine in wanting to get pregnant again so Olive can have a sibling. As motivation that takes her from a Harley Street specialist to Shep’s houseboat – Katherine can’t stand him, but their previous child is a standout collaboration.

Ryan is not a great actor, but a good chunk of her performance is delivering dismissals so she certainly has the necessary feel for the part. And in an unexpected way Ryan’s lack of range makes Katherine a more intriguing, defiant character. Having fixed her life after being abandoned by Shep, she’s unwilling to let anyone in, and there are nods to the conventions of what society says a successful woman is that the storylines pick at. Katherine can be callous or self-centred, which is fertile ground for a comedy if it’s prepared to shed some of its potential audience in the first episode or two. I got further than that, and if you want your laughs straight no chaser then you might too.

Shock Tactics: Billie Piper (Suzie Pickles) in I Hate Suzie

I HATE SUZIE S1 (Stan, all eight episodes now streaming): Reunited from Secret Diary of a Call Girl, star Billie Piper and writer Lucy Prebble have fashioned a knotty, freaked-out blackly comic drama about carrying on when your world collapses. Daubed with surreal interludes and a deliberately diverse directorial voice, I Hate Suzie begins on the morning that teenage pop star turned successful English actor Suzie Pickles (Piper) does a photo shoot in her home just as the internet is melting down over the photo of her engaged in a sexual act hacked from her phone. The victim of a sexual assault who’s been dragged through the tabloids even as her husband, university lecturer Cob (Daniel Ings) grows more irate, Suzie pinballs from coping mechanisms to benders, marriage therapy to fan conventions. This is not the satire of celebrity panic it might first appear to be, even if Suzie’s manager and pal Naomi (Leila Farzad) is take no prisoners operator, instead shapeshifting as a rigorous character study that gets at deeply fascinating truths.

NEWLY ADDED MOVIES

New on Netflix: An effective World War II/horror mash-up from Australian director Julius Avery, Overlord (2018, 110 minutes) follows a squad of American paratroopers who uncover a Nazi supernatural experiment; Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010, 112 minutes) is a comic book/indie-rock/gaming comedy – starring Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin and Chris Evans – whose delirious riffs play better with each year.

New on Stan: Selma (2014, 129 minutes) is that rare historic drama – of the Civil Rights push in the 1960s American south – that has an in the moment energy, compelling communal emotion, and a nuanced central portrait in David Oyelowo’s Dr Martin Luther King; a film that says far more than Netflix’s stultifying series Away, Proxima (2019, 108 minutes) puts Eva Green in a fresh light as a French astronaut who must yield her family to a mission.

New on SBS on Demand: A masterfully assured black comedy about monsters of many types and our embrace to them, Nacho Vigalondo’s Colossal (2016, 110 minutes) stars Anne Hathaway as a teetering alcoholic whose return home coincides with a giant kaiju stomping through Seoul in South Korea every night – the connection is surreal, but the ramifications, especially with her pal turned oppressor Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), are profoundly relevant.

>> Missed last week’s BINGE-R? Click here to read about Amazon’s scathingly relevant superhero satire The Boys and Netflix’s brain-bender movie I’m Thinking of Ending Things.

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