It may have taken 4 years to eventually get to see the totally charming Australian comedy drama Please Like Me, but it was so well worth the wait. The series that ran for 4 seasons has finally landed up on the Hulu network which encourages you to binge watch as each episode leaves you wanting more.
Please Like Me is the creation of the very talented wunderkind Josh Thomas who developed it from his stand-up routine of the same name in 2007 when he had reached the ripe old age of 20. In the show this writer/producer/star plays a fictionalized version of himself, who in the very first episode is dumped by his girlfriend, hit on by office hottie Geoffrey (Wade Briggs) who drags him out of the closet, and his newly separated mother Rose (Debra Lawrance) is rushed to hospital after a suicide attempt.
Thomas’s self-deprecating humor and his whole slant on life which he expects to be easier than it is, makes him an unlikely leading man that we cannot help but root for. What however makes it all a cut above other coming out stories is that the scenarios he writes, that literally must have been taken from his own life, are refreshingly real and extremely funny.
He is surrounded by a talented cast of well meaning characters who just fail to do the right thing despite all their good intentions. His best friend Tom (played by his real life friend Thomas Ward) is trapped in relationship with his controlling girlfriend Niamh (Nikita Leigh-Pritchard ) who he wants to break up with, but ends up having sex with instead every time he tries. Then there is Josh’s ex girlfriend Claire (Caitlin Stasey ) who still keeps turning up to hang up even though Geoffrey is also there trying to persuade Josh to lose his gay cherry.
Any chance of that happening is not helped by the fact that now his mother has been released from hospital, the Doctor tells Josh that he has to move back in with her. His father (David Roberts) is actually keener to move back into the marital home, but there is the small question of his feisty young Thai girlfriend (Renee Lim ).
The series was a smash hit in Australia although the ABC network who commissioned it got cold feet and instead of screening it on their main channel they moved it to their online digital once when they got wind of the (very tame) gay content. They changed their mind within six months when the popular series was critically acclaimed and starting being nominated for Awards.
The series arrived in the U.S. in 2013 on the short lived Pivot TV channel, before finally arriving at Hulu where it is bound to repeat its success as frankly it is quite unlike any American TV series with LGBT content. It has occasionally been compared with Lena Dunham’s Girls, but Thomas’s humor is not so acerbic and has a great deal more heart.
He wisely pulled the plug after 4 very successful seasons saying he had taken the story as far as he could/wanted, and we cannot wait to see what this young comic genius will turn his hand too. Meanwhile however we still have series 2 -4 to watch…..!
Labels: 2017, Australian, comedy, coming out, TV series
