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Gameface is the first full series for Man Down‘s Roisin Conaty as Marcella, part-time actress and mostly-time office temp, as her life lurches from one disaster to another.
Thankfully, her disasters are our pleasure as they lead to semi-ridiculous situations which we can partly identify with, plus jokes which on the face of it start off quite funny, then are fleshed out with additional dialogue to make them even more hilarious. Plus, since the 2014 C4 pilot has led to an E4 series, this should really be on Channel 4 where quality sitcoms are all too often replaced by programmes where the titles contain one or more of the following words: Cats, Countdown and Gogglebox.
Marcella tells her tales in flashback while discussing them with her therapist, Graham, with Twenty Twelve‘s Karl Theobald the place of her Man Down co-star Mike Wozniak, but there are a few other cast changes between this and the pilot.
In the first episode she shows herself up at a children’s party with “red wine lips”, She drunk-posts on her ex Simon’s Instagram photos, she castigates a child for being a “boss-eyed little Tory”, plus one particular scene I won’t spoil but you’ll know it when it comes. The second episode is also a cracker.
Add in fantasy diversions about the future of the world which look far more realistic than the threat of so-called ‘man-made global warming’, and there’s a lot of laughs to be had in this, and since we’ve waited three-and-a-half years for a full series, I hope we don’t have to wait so long for more.
And the first episode also includes 42nd Street Nightclub favourite Everywhere, by Fleetwood Mac.
Gameface begins on Thursday on E4 at 9pm with a double-bill, and once broadcast, each episode will be on All4, but isn’t yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD.
Episode 1 and 2 Score: 8/10
Director: Andrew Chaplin
Producer: Charlotte Lewis
Creator/Writer: Roisin Conaty
Cast:
Marcella: Roisin Conaty
Caroline: Caroline Ginty
Graham: Karl Theobald
Lucy: Nina Toussaint-White
Simon: Dustin Demri-Burns
Jon: Damien Molony
Steven: Ben Clark
Ian: Ciaran Dowd
Amy: Catriona Knox
Little Girl: Ava Hammat
Little Boy: Jake Stacey
Child’s mum: Rachel Stubbings
Tanya: Tiffany Stevenson
Billy: Dylan Edwards
Office Colleagues: Rosa-Marie Lewis, Paul Longley
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.