'Such Brave Girls' and Suspiros de España

Until two days ago, when North American and Spanish series served us around twenty servings per season, sitting in front of a British series meant watching a breeze. The usual half-dozen episodes of any BBC, Channel 4 or ITV fiction acted as exotic islands on which to spend a weekend. Now that the ghost of short series is sweeping the world, long-term lovers have nowhere to rest our heads and we are like chickens without ditto.

The six episodes of Such Brave Girls, a series produced by A24 for BBC3 (here, on Filmin) lasted me an afternoon. A joyful afternoon, yes, but an afternoon. Before I would have appreciated it, now I want more. It's been a long time since I've seen a comedy so self-conscious and so apparently free. But the first thing I think about while watching it is not the envy that its creator, Kat Sadler, arouses in me, who, at 30, writes and co-stars with her sister in real life and on screen, the hilarious Lizzie Davidson, a gross series that laughs at everything, frivolizes with everything and criticizes everything. The first thing I think is that she is not new, and I mean that as a compliment.

The British television tradition has established genealogies to which practically any creator can be ascribed, whether they make thrillers, social dramas, science fiction, comedy or everything at the same time. It has been cited a lot these days Fleabag and Derry Girls as precursors of Such Brave Girlsbut for me the one it most resembles is sugar rush, a series produced by Channel 4 in 2006 and whose protagonist was a teenager who fell in love with her only friend. Another gross series that began with the protagonist masturbating with an electric toothbrush.

I think of Spanish television—every time we mention the BBC the comparisons seem as inevitable as they are painful for us—and I sigh. While on our public television the hypothetical signing of David Broncano causes an earthquake with professional victims, the United Kingdom gives the opportunity to a young screenwriter through comedy scholarships to create a series whose broadcast on Spanish public television would cause falls monocle I make the comparison and I promise myself not to do it again with an eagerness equal to the certainty that it will happen again and I will fall again.

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