TV Review: Threesome (Series 1)

 

Do you know what would make me feel less old?” 

Tom MacRae’s 2011 sitcom Threesome was the first original scripted comedy commissioned by British satellite channel Comedy Central. Starting off as a flatshare comedy about 3 college friends making the most of carefree living in their twenties, the big shift comes after a huge night out which ends up with them regretting a drunken threesome. And this being tv-land, it is not Amy’s boyfriend Mitch who impregnates her but rather their friend Richie, who just happens to be gay. And really being tv-land, they opt to have the baby altogether, raising it as a threesome.

Working their way through the tropes of pregnancy-based comedy, this offers a rather neat twist on the standard gags (Sylvestra Le Touzel makes a great ante-natal class leader), allowing for the complementary characteristics of the trio to make up just about enough maturity for one adult – at least at the beginning of the series – as they each come into their own, Stephen Wight’s Mitch doing the most obvious maturing as the father-to-be of a son who isn’t genetically his. 

It is in the portrayal of third wheel Richie where things come a little unstuck, as the sexual politics around him finally finding a boyfriend who he can see a future with – the almost unfairly gorgeous Adam Garcia – are treated with dismissive disdain by Amy Huberman’s Alice in particular. As a comedy, it could just be laughed off but as a reflection of modern society, it says a lot that the only way the gay man is allowed to remain in this scenario is as a non-sexual being. It’s not the be all and end all of the show but it was the thing that rankled (and still does) most and one I found hard to forgive. 

The writing is usually funny enough to raise laughs as well as chuckles, there’s a good series of cameos from Pauline McLynn, Paddy Navin and Joanna Roth as the three mothers and grandmas-to-be, and whilst I doubt it will live particularly long in the memory, I enjoyed it while watching it. Worth renting? Just about.

 

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