Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Perfect to fall asleep to: Good Grief reviewed

Plus: Shook sets the scene for an almighty power struggle between dangerous youths but the writer wants to show us how caring and gentle the prisoners are

Nikesh Patel and Sian Clifford in snoozefest Good Grief 
issue 13 February 2021

Good Grief is a new drama starring Sian Clifford who shot to fame as the older sister in Fleabag. The script by Lorien Haynes is described by the producers as ‘sharp, funny, brutal, irreverent and quintessentially British’. The action begins after a funeral where a handsome young Asian guy named Adam, chats to a fellow mourner, Cat, who looks about ten years older than him. Cat has set up Adam with a blind date that he didn’t enjoy. ‘I was peeling her off me,’ he says, ungallantly. But Adam’s sexuality is rather a puzzle. His wife, Liv, has died and he boasts to Cat about Liv’s endless romantic conquests. At parties Liv would spend ages telling Adam which men she’d recently seduced. And Adam claims to be proud of his dead wife’s erotic prowess. It’s not clear why. The script is keen to outrage us with its sexual frankness, like Fleabag, but a lot of it seems a bit weird.

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