Few writers take criticism well, fewer actively court it. Kat Sadler, however, has an insatiable appetite for negative feedback. When crafting her BBC sitcom Such Brave Girls, the 31-year-old frequently runs the scripts past her younger sister and co-star Lizzie Davidson \u2013 but she isn\u2019t looking for praise. Instead, \u201cshe wants you to tear it to pieces\u201d, says Davidson. \u201cShe loves it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI get off on it,\u201d confirms Sadler, with matter-of-fact melancholy.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re like: yeah, yeah, yeah,\u201d says Davidson, mimicking her sister\u2019s dismissive response to compliments. \u201cNow tell me what you didn\u2019t like about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Sadler\u2019s masochistic streak isn\u2019t getting much gratification at the moment: where Such Brave Girls is concerned, complaints have been very thin on the ground. The first series of this vicious and relentlessly outrageous BBC sitcom \u2013 in which Sadler and Davidson play Josie and Billie, a pair of desperate, delusional, self-obsessed sisters tiptoeing around their perpetually furious mother \u2013 was met with a unanimously enthusiastic response from critics when it aired in the winter of 2023: a slew of award nominations followed; soon after, it won the Bafta for best scripted comedy.<\/p>\n
This was an exceptional achievement for two reasons. First, because the pair\u2019s success seemed to come out of nowhere. Sadler had been a joke writer for hire on TV comedy<\/a> entertainment shows (Mel Giedroyc: Unforgivable; Joe Lycett\u2019s Got Your Back), while Davidson was an aspiring actor marooned in interactive children\u2019s entertainment (a particular grim job at a Shrek-themed show attracted bratty kids who seemed to enjoy insulting the cast). Second, because Such Brave Girls was a product of extreme low points in both their lives: during lockdown, the sisters had a phone call in which Davidson confessed she had accrued \u00a320k of debt and Sadler revealed she had been sectioned after trying to end her life twice.<\/p>\n All at sea \u2026 Kat Sadler and Lizzie Davidson in Such Brave Girls. Photograph: Vishal Shama\/BBC\/Various Artists Limited<\/p>\n Miraculously, the pair managed to see the funny side, and decided to channel their collective misery into a sitcom \u2013 keeping Sadler\u2019s mental health issues for Josie, but transferring Davidson\u2019s debt to their fictional mother, Deb. The result is a remorselessly hilarious show about depression, anxiety, sexuality, abandonment, dysfunctional relationships and poverty that never gets close to worthy, earnest dramedy; something you could probably predict from the very first episode, in which Deb orders Josie \u2013 who has been experiencing low moods and panic attacks \u2013 to cheer up as her \u201chaunting presence\u201d is negatively affecting Deb\u2019s new boyfriend\u2019s libido.<\/p>\n I first spoke to the pair a couple of weeks before series one aired. At that point, the sisters (who have different surnames as Sadler is a stage name) were giddy with nerves, grappling with the surreal prospect of their semi-autobiographical sitcom being broadcast to the nation; each day Davidson would refresh the TV planner in the hope of glimpsing it in the schedules. We meet again in December 2024, on the set of series two. Since the show\u2019s rapturous reception and Bafta win \u2013 an invitation to the British comedy firmament if ever there was one (past winners have included The Office, Peep Show, The Thick of It and Derry Girls) \u2013 I assume their lives have been transformed into a whirlwind of showbiz thrills. Have they?<\/p>\n Josie is such a pure narcissist. She really believes she\u2019s the main character \u2013 everything revolves round her<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Kat Sadler<\/p>\n \u201cI wish they had,\u201d says Sadler, eating lunch in a shabby makeshift green room during a brief break from filming. \u201cYou need to hear about the day we won the Bafta. It was just weird.\u201d The pair got an Uber home from the ceremony, \u201cand it was just like: well, back to our lives. I got up the next morning, went to the office and carried on writing.\u201d Meanwhile, Davidson \u2013 a gifted comic actor \u2013 immediately went back to her job in a clothing shop. \u201cAnd nobody said anything!\u201d says Sadler, still astonished. \u201cI didn\u2019t even take my makeup off from the night before, I just turned up and was like: hey guys!\u201d Davidson recalls. Having envisaged a victorious return to the shop floor, she was quickly brought back down to earth. \u201c[My colleagues] were just like: the shoes are there,\u201d Davidson sighs. She\u2019s due to go back to her day job the month after we speak.<\/p>\n The pair may not feel like superstars, but the Such Brave Girls set certainly has a buzz about it. Although the action is set in the West Sussex commuter town of Crawley, the show\u2019s interior scenes are filmed in a defunct school on the outskirts of Liverpool, and the BBC\u2019s director of comedy Jon Petrie and two other senior producers have also made the long journey north-west to check in on one of their hottest properties. Britcom giant Simon Bird, AKA Will from The Inbetweeners \u2013 who wrote Sadler a letter asking if he could work on the series after falling in love with the pilot \u2013 is once again in the director\u2019s chair (in this case, one of the chintzy armchairs in the sisters\u2019 fictional living room). I watch Sadler and Davidson perform a two-hander, which differs markedly from that day\u2019s script; the pair alter and edit the words as they go along, sometimes for clarity, sometimes for extra laughs and sometimes just because someone forgot a couple of their lines.<\/p>\n Mother load \u2026 Louise Brealey (right) with Paul Bazely in Such Brave Girls. Photograph: James Stack\/BBC\/Various Artists Limited<\/p>\n It is clear that Sadler is genuinely not precious about her dialogue; Bird also seems very relaxed about the on-camera brainstorming. \u201cThere\u2019s lots of flexibility, but you also get that sense that Kat knows what it is,\u201d says Sherlock\u2019s Louise Brealey, who plays the sisters\u2019 mother, Deb. \u201cThey\u2019re guardians of their characters,\u201d says Sadler, about the cast. \u201cSo often the thing they want to change is right. It will be something I haven\u2019t noticed.\u201d Brealey plays Deb as a fellow Northamptonshire native, so usually makes minor changes to the phrasing to suit her accent, which she amps up for the show. \u201cYou do an accent?\u201d chips in Davidson, with mock confusion.<\/p>\n Brealey rolls her eyes. \u201cThey tease me, this is a running joke.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so subtle,\u201d continues Davidson, as the sisters descend into hysterics.<\/p>\n \u201cGet fucked,\u201d says Brealey. \u201cMy real voice is posh!\u201d<\/p>\n It is hard to imagine Josie and Billie baiting Deb with such impunity: the Such Brave Girls matriarch is an extraordinarily cynical, appearance-obsessed woman on the verge, desperate to hang on to her man\/meal ticket Dev (Benidorm\u2019s Paul Bazely) and ready to brutally lay into her firstborn at a moment\u2019s notice (her targets include Josie\u2019s ketchup usage, depressive episodes, unshaven legs, round shoulders and androgynous dress sense). Is she going to be as horrible in series two? Sadler jumps to her defence: \u201cI don\u2019t think she\u2019s horrible, I think she doesn\u2019t mince her words.\u201d Brealey isn\u2019t so sure. Actors are meant to be eternally sympathetic to their characters, she says, but \u201cI would say she\u2019s pretty much a monster\u201d.<\/p>\n Brealey is clearly very different from Deb: effusive and extroverted, she sings loudly while having her makeup touched up and cringes as she recalls filling pauses in production by performing showtunes for the crew. Josie and Billie, on the other hand, began life as exaggerated versions of the sisters themselves. As well as her mental health issues, Josie shares Sadler\u2019s belief that trauma is an interesting personality trait; ever the self-flagellator, she seems to revel in sending herself up. Josie, she insists, \u201cis the worst one, because she\u2019s such a pure narcissist. She really believes she\u2019s the main character \u2013 everything revolves round her.\u201d<\/p>\n Cake walkthrough \u2026 Simon Bird directing Such Brave Girls. Photograph: Vishal Sharma\/BBC\/Various Artists Limited<\/p>\n Like her character, the real-life Sadler comes across as thoughtful and amenable \u2013 but doesn\u2019t share her fictional alter ego\u2019s cartoonish passivity; Josie is people-pleasing to the point of ridiculousness. Davidson, meanwhile, tells me she identifies with Billie\u2019s \u201cobsession with attention\u201d, which her character often attracts via aggro melodrama. In person, she is mischievously irreverent but far more laid-back than Billie, who also works in the bleak world of children\u2019s entertainment (an opportunity for many strikingly incongruous costume choices; in one episode she arrives at an abortion clinic dressed as a witch).<\/p>\n Series one of Such Brave Girls covered Josie\u2019s attempts to get a girlfriend while blocking out the constant presence of her clammy, cockroach-like boyfriend Seb (Freddie Meredith), while Billie pursued her noncommittal \u201csoulmate\u201d Nicky (Sam Buchanan) with unhinged devotion. In the final episode, the pair attend their paternal grandmother\u2019s funeral, hoping to confront their father, who popped out for teabags a decade ago and never came back. (When I tell Sadler I\u2019d presumed that bit hadn\u2019t actually happened, she replies: \u201cNo, not teabags.\u201d) If series one was the long-awaited debut \u2013 into which Sadler could channel all the rich raw material she had accrued over her lifetime \u2013 series two is the difficult second album, requiring less literal truth and more imagination.<\/p>\n Sadler initially didn\u2019t let herself think about a follow-up \u2013 it would have been \u201ctoo heartbreaking\u201d if it hadn\u2019t been recommissioned (\u201cLike: what do I do with all these thoughts?!\u201d). The writing process was daunting and exhausting. \u201cI have gone loopy. Lizzie\u2019s had to do a lot of mental health work on me this year to keep me going,\u201d says Sadler. \u201cA lot of phone calls, a lot of day trips, a lot of shopping,\u201d nods Davidson. A breakthrough came when Sadler decided to turn up the intensity: the money aspect is \u201cmore stressful, the house is more cramped \u2013 everybody\u2019s stuck\u201d. Her north star was a determination \u201cto make everyone\u2019s lives worse\u201d. I can confirm that series two is Such Brave Girls \u201csquared\u201d, as Brealey puts it: all the women\u2019s romantic, financial and existential problems remain but intensified to nightmarish proportions.<\/p>\n Sadler also decided to make a list of hot-button topics to weave into the script: \u201cstuff that had been annoying me in the news or a concept I\u2019d seen people get irritated about online. Then I\u2019d think: how would our characters deal with that?\u201d The answer, usually, is in the most unenlightened way possible: in series one, depression is an irritant, not conforming to beauty standards is \u201cselfish\u201d, therapists are cashing in on other people\u2019s misery, trauma is a turn-on, sex is just something to \u201cget through\u201d, and suicide is used as emotional blackmail. Series two, meanwhile, mercilessly satirises the idea of contented singledom, and puts uproariously novel spins on age-gap affairs and coercive control.<\/p>\n This is one of the secrets of Such Brave Girls\u2019 success: it combines contemporary relevance \u2013 the show is essentially about a depressed woman grappling with her sexuality \u2013 with an utter lack of compassion and empathy. Yet while the show rebels against the sanctimony that has plagued modern comedy, it doesn\u2019t hark back to old-school political incorrectness. The jokes about Josie\u2019s exponentially serious mental health issues do not punch down because they closely mimic Sadler\u2019s own experiences. \u201cIf you lived it, if it has truth, you can get away with anything,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Still, in a landscape of warm, big-hearted, issue-led comedy, Such Brave Girls feels deliciously risque. For series two, Sadler was focused on \u201chow nefarious we can make our characters\u201d and \u201cwho else we can annoy with our show\u201d. \u201cHow much offence we can cause,\u201d adds Brealey. Does Sadler think the show caused offence? \u201cI don\u2019t really look online at that stuff,\u201d she says, brow furrowed.<\/p>\n If she had, she wouldn\u2019t have found much pushback. Such Brave Girls has achieved a rare feat: a not safe, not nice and genuinely boundary-pushing sitcom that hasn\u2019t caused any discernible upset. Which, for a criticism junkie like Sadler, might not be the news she was hoping for.<\/p>\n Series two of Such Brave Girls airs on 3 July on BBC Three and iPlayer. <\/p>\n The charity Mind<\/a> is available on 0300 123 3393 and Childline<\/a> on 0800 1111. In the US, call or text Mental Health America<\/a> at 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue<\/a> on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline<\/a> on 13 11 14, and at MensLine<\/a> on 1300 789 978<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Few writers take criticism well, fewer actively court it. Kat Sadler, however, has an insatiable appetite for negative…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3937],"tags":[77,382,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-186565","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114687879793526399","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}