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‘Mighty Boosh’ star Julian Barratt returns in the dark new TV comedy ‘Flowers’
05.05.2016
12:01 pm
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Last night I binge-watched four of the six episodes of the new Channel 4/Seeso black comedy co-production, Flowers (It’s already aired in the UK, where they ran it on five consecutive nights at the end of April after a two-part premiere; it’s available on Seeso from today). Had my wife not conked out, I’d have happily watched the entire series. I woke up this morning feeling very enthusiastic about watching the final ones tonight, and of telling our cherished, good-looking, high IQ readership about it. I think it’s safe to say that the Venn diagram of people who read this blog and those who would like Flowers, which stars Julian Barratt (The Mighty Boosh) and Olivia Colman (Broadchurch, Peep Show, The Night Manager) will overlap quite a bit. TV.com’s Tim Surette succinctly described it as “Arrested Development through the eyes of Wes Anderson reinterpreting Harold & Maude,” a razor-sharp summation that frankly I cannot hope to top. You see what I mean, though. If these Flowers seem to smell of something you might like, then I think you’ll like it quite a bit.
 

“I suppose you can’t have too much of a good thing… like joy.”

Flowers focuses on the idiosyncratic Flowers family. Maurice Flowers, a depressed and suicidal children’s writer, is played by Barratt in his best non-Boosh role since 2005’s Nathan Barley. Colman—an actress of extraordinary gifts—plays the sweet and kind Deborah, his normal-ish (emphasis on the “ish”) wife, a highly-strung music teacher who could make coffee nervous. Their strained sexless marriage is teetering on oblivion. They have twin adult children living with them, two creepy ne’er do wells—a dickhead “inventor” of stupid things (Daniel Rigby) and his peculiar sister (Sophia Di Martino), a vaguely gothy lesbian “musician” who obsesses on the pretty next door neighbor, who is apparently fucking her plastic surgeon father.
 

 
In Flowers, suicide, mental illness, pedophilia, incest and sexual infidelity are played for laughs. Writer-director Will Sharpe (who hilariously portrays Shun, Maurice’s Japanese assistant and illustrator) doesn’t overdo the more Andersonian elements of his script and neither does the stellar cast. They’re believably strange, not the Addams Family. For wallowing in such unsettling subject matter Flowers is actually quite unexpectedly subtle, and nicely cinematic for a TV comedy series.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.05.2016
12:01 pm
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