such brave girls is a new comedy from writer-performer Kat Sadler coming to BBC Three as part of their Comedy Slices strand.
The show explores life and love in all its ugly chaos, following a single mother, Deb, and her two daughters, Josie and Billie, attempting to piece their lives back together after their narcissistic wreckhead father and husband finally f*cked off for good.
It’s about a family navigating life armed with nothing but a warped view of the world, poor judgement skills and self-esteem that’s exclusively tied to men and women who couldn’t care less whether or not they stop breathing. They’re vain, selfish, heavily in debt, angry, pathologically desperate for affection, minorly (sometimes majorly) criminal and bursting with misplaced, terrifying love.
Josie is played by Sadler and her real-life sister, Lizzie Davidson, plays her on-screen sister, Billie. Deb is played by Louise Brealey (Sherlock) and it co-stars Paul Bazely as Deb’s prospective new boyfriend, Dev, and Amy Trigg as Josie’s workmate, Clare.
Kat says: “Everything we joke about in the show is from a place of lived experience. I wish I could say this is a heart-warming show about overcoming trauma, but that would be a lie. It’s about three toxic, damaged egomaniacs manipulating the world and each other for their own personal gain, vengeance and glory. Yes, just like in Little Women.”
Lizzie Davidson said: “Cheers to BBC for letting two queers with mental health issues have a TV show. Or wherever BBC Three is now, I still don’t quite understand. And if any of this show makes you uncomfortable, at least you didn’t have to live it.”
Producer Simon Mayhew-Archer says: “This is a comedy packed with extremely funny, complicated characters whom you will sometimes want to hug and other times run away from. The cast is amazing, as is the writing - brutally authentic and charmingly funny. I love these people and I’m also quite scared of them.”
Gregor Sharp, BBC Comedy Commissioning Editor adds: “such brave girls is a brilliantly unique and totally unflinching take on the family sitcom and so feels perfectly at home on BBC Three.”
Kat is a writer-performer whose most recent credits include ITV2’s Tell Me Everything and TV shows like Jonathan Ross, Mel Giedroyc: Unforgivable, Frankie Boyle’s New World Order, Mock The Week and lots more. For BBC Radio 4 she’s written for Sue Perkins’ Nature Table, Joe Lycett’s Obsessions etc. Kat has been nominated twice for the BBC New Comedian of the Year Award, and in 2019 she was awarded the prestigious BBC comedy writing bursary, where she became the in-house comedy writer for BBC Studios.
Picture: Ian Weldon
Kat and Lizzie’s combined credits include: depression, anxiety, IBS, ADHD, and Complex PTSD. Lizzie also most recently won funniest cast member of Shrek’s Adventure - London’s premier tourist attraction for Shrek related content.
such brave girls (1x22’) is directed by Marco Alessi (Toni with an i), produced by This Country producer, Simon Mayhew-Archer and Exec Produced by Stephen McCrum for Camden Productions. The commissioning editor for BBC is Gregor Sharp.
It will air on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer this autumn.
