IF YOU HAVEN’T yet discovered the Channel 4 series Catastrophe, then you’re missing one of the best British comedies of recent years. The acclaimed show’s final series began streaming March 15th on Amazon prime, and but feel free to binge watch from the beginning – each show is just 30 minutes long with six episodes a season.
Catastrophe features American actor Rob Delaney and Irish actress Sharon Horgan (the pair also created and wrote the show) as a seemingly mismatched couple living in London and raising their kids who somehow make it work despite an unpromising beginning.
Rob and Sharon’s coupling began in Season One with a fling while businessman Rob was on a work trip to London, only for Sharon to fall pregnant, resulting in Rob moving to the UK and attempting to be a good father and husband. The fact that his wife is still listed in his phone as “Sharon London Sex,” is a nod to unlikely beginning that brought the two together. The ensuing seasons have seen the pair increasing their family, doing their best to bridge the cultural divide between them, while dealing with an array of challenges ranging from dividing parenting responsibilities, work issues and money to incipient alcohol addiction and infidelity.
The show manages to walk the tightrope of brutal honesty and pathos on one side and hilarity on the other. And the cultural references feel of-the-moment too: witness Sharon being upset over Rob coming home late because “now I have to watch Game of Thrones by myself like a pervert.”
The show benefits from a sterling cast of supporting characters, especially Mark Bonnar as Rob’s know-it-all friend Chris and Ashley Jensen as Chris’s quietly desperate estranged wife Fran. Then there’s Sharon’s brother Fergal (Jonathan Forbes) who brings a whole new dimension to their dysfunctional family dynamic.
The shows tone veers from chaos to turmoil through brutal honesty but it’s all leavened by some wonderful moments of humor, especially from Horgan, whose Anglo-Irish sensibility will be gloriously familiar to British viewers. One is always left with the satisfying sense that despite all the turmoil, this couple were just meant for each other. In the end this final season is not a bittersweet so much as a frustrating farewell to a show that could have run and run.
