Such Brave Girls; Archie

“It’s no longer shocking in itself to see women behaving badly and tackling taboos on television, which means Such Brave Girls has to go that bit further to get our attention. I’d like to tell you some of the ways in which it does this, but I can’t really repeat them here in case you’re reading before the watershed. Let’s just say that a running joke in episode one involves one of the girls walking in on their mother doing something you will want to unsee, while bent over the toaster.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph

“There is a particular joy in seeing a woman-led, female-written show that doesn’t pull its punches and revels in plumbing the depths. Their nan’s heartfelt but (probably) untrue testimony about being taken out and beaten in the night by her care workers is one of the smaller moments of the show, but perfectly indicative of its tone and its triumph. Such Brave Girls is indeed brave – singular, fresh, scabrous and unflinching – but still – or, rather, as a result – hilarious. Let’s hope a second series, set up by the finale, will, like the girls, eventually make it through.”
Lucy Mangan, The Guardian

“Archie is at its most compelling in the recreations of Grant’s one-man show. And towards the end of the series, there’s an arresting scene during an LSD-fuelled therapy trip, in which Grant’s consciousness veers between the past and the present, his vulnerability writ large. It’s a shame that more of the programme isn’t like this, lingering in the space between wrong and right. But for the most part, Archie is hesitant in its probing and lacking in both depth and nuance, merely sketching out the most obvious beats of Grant’s story.”
Marianne Levy, The i

“As [Dyan] Cannon, Laura Aikman superbly captures a future star’s fragile mix of energy, intelligence and naivety. Jason Isaacs, meanwhile, exactly embodies both the superficial appeal of Grant – the smooth patter, stocky frame and air of amused incredulity – and the smothered menace that Jeff Pope’s script is digging down to find. Isaacs plays Grant as a man who is too damaged to be as kind as he would like, too busy compensating for his past to see what is important to him in the present. It would have been easy to sanitise how difficult Grant was to live with, but Archie doesn’t – and if there is any suspicion that we are watching Cannon’s side of the story, well, if it was only half as bad as she says, it was really bad.”
Jack Seale, The Guardian

“Jason Isaacs is well cast as Grant, even if he does look more like Bob Monkhouse. The role doesn’t require him to play the charming, public face of Grant, only the insecure, sorrowful side. Laura Aikman looks uncannily like Cannon and fizzes with youthful energy; it’s easy to see how Grant fell for her, and equally easy to see why she eventually felt constrained by this cardigan-wearing fusspot 33 years her senior. Grant’s experiments with LSD as therapy add an incongruous note, but did really happen.”
Anita Singh, Telegraph