This is - by a mile - my current favourite TV show. We've just finished Series Three in the UK, with the fourth and final series starting next week. A comedy about a woman with a terminal cancer diagnosis is clearly trespassing on the very edge of taste, but THE BIG C is much more - or much less - than a comedy. It's a family drama that balances - perfectly, in my view - on the fine line between comedy and tragedy.
As Cathy and Paul Jamison, Laura Linney and Oliver Platt give beautifully judged performances. Cathy is feisty and independent, but also frightened and needy. Paul is supportive despite going through a health and career crisis of his own - not to mention a bad dose of the Seven (14) Year Itch. All Paul's problems coalesced in Series Three when he hooked up with lifestyle guru Susan Sarandon (she was sublime!) who threw him a career lifeline and then - literally - grabbed him by the balls. John Benjamin Hickey as Cathy's retro-hippy brother Sean is a clever variant on WILL AND GRACE's ditzy friend Karen. Series Three gave Sean his best plot line when (though straight) he took over a gay phone-sex line and then became the playmate of a bi couple. Cathy and Paul's teenage son Adam (Gabriel Basso) is almost a twist on Edina's painfully normal daughter Saffy in AB-FAB. As an ongoing character I don't think Gabourey Sidibe's Andrea works as well as Phyllis Somerville's Marlene whom she replaced; dead Marlene intermittently haunts Cathy much as Nate Fisher was haunted by his dad in SIX FEET UNDER - before he turned into a ghost himself.
The Jamisons, for me, are the most endearing family since the weird and wacky Fishers; I wish they - and the Fishers! - lived on my street. The last episode of SIX FEET UNDER was one of the greatest hours of television drama, brilliantly inventive, deeply human, intensely moving. I don't know how Series Four of THE BIG C will end, but I'm guessing Cathy will somehow sail off into another sunset, much as she swam into one this week. No Spoilers, please, from US viewers - I'm happy to wait and see!
As Cathy and Paul Jamison, Laura Linney and Oliver Platt give beautifully judged performances. Cathy is feisty and independent, but also frightened and needy. Paul is supportive despite going through a health and career crisis of his own - not to mention a bad dose of the Seven (14) Year Itch. All Paul's problems coalesced in Series Three when he hooked up with lifestyle guru Susan Sarandon (she was sublime!) who threw him a career lifeline and then - literally - grabbed him by the balls. John Benjamin Hickey as Cathy's retro-hippy brother Sean is a clever variant on WILL AND GRACE's ditzy friend Karen. Series Three gave Sean his best plot line when (though straight) he took over a gay phone-sex line and then became the playmate of a bi couple. Cathy and Paul's teenage son Adam (Gabriel Basso) is almost a twist on Edina's painfully normal daughter Saffy in AB-FAB. As an ongoing character I don't think Gabourey Sidibe's Andrea works as well as Phyllis Somerville's Marlene whom she replaced; dead Marlene intermittently haunts Cathy much as Nate Fisher was haunted by his dad in SIX FEET UNDER - before he turned into a ghost himself.
The Jamisons, for me, are the most endearing family since the weird and wacky Fishers; I wish they - and the Fishers! - lived on my street. The last episode of SIX FEET UNDER was one of the greatest hours of television drama, brilliantly inventive, deeply human, intensely moving. I don't know how Series Four of THE BIG C will end, but I'm guessing Cathy will somehow sail off into another sunset, much as she swam into one this week. No Spoilers, please, from US viewers - I'm happy to wait and see!