“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.