Such Brave Girls Is the Best Hulu Comedy You're Not Watching

It's said that a good laugh can heal a whole lot of hurts. If that's true, then Kat Sadler understood the assignment. The star and creator of Hulu's new six-part import, Such Brave Girls, shines a light on trauma the only way many people know how: with comedy.

The series was loosely inspired by Sadler's own life. Around the time of the pandemic she suffered from poor mental health and suicidal thoughts. When she opened up to her sister, Lizzie Davidson, Davidson revealed she was secretly £20,000 in debt. Rather than console each other, the girls burst into laughter, prompting Sadler to put pen to paper. 

Such Brave Girls is the unflinching but witty result of those efforts. It's also a refreshing female-led comedy that doesn't worry about being proper or pulling punches. At its core, that's because it is an honest, unexpected and sometimes raunchy portrayal of three women who are just trying to get by while going through one of the hardest times of their lives.

It's also funny as hell. 

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In the first episode, viewers meet sisters Josie (Sadler) and Billie (Davidson). The young women are both dealing with the emotional fallout of their father leaving them, although their coping mechanisms are quite different. Josie is fresh from a visit to a mental health facility and yearns for therapy, something her mother refuses because it's a waste of money. 

Billie is full of self-confidence and blinders for the emotionally stunted man in her life, Nicky (Sam Buchanan). When she's not busy pining for him or plotting how to get him back, she's welcoming him into her bedroom for unprotected sex. 

Then there's Deb (Louise Brealey), the girls' mother. She's a constant presence in her daughters' lives but is the opposite of loving, imparting wisdom that includes nuggets like learning to never follow your dreams. Deb's main plight is getting out of the debt her ex-husband has left her in, and her answer comes in the form of her new boyfriend, Dev (Paul Bazely). 

Dev's introduction in the first episode is creepy but promising, and the girls decide to call him "Daddy" before even meeting him (although Billie will only do so in a sexual way). However, he's put off by Josie's unrelenting talk about her mental health and her sad face. The kitchen scene that follows may put you off your pudding for the next six months. 

As the episodes unfold, the bond between the family strengthens and so too does the show. The women are united in their mission of bringing Dev into their fold, led by Deb and her willingness to do whatever it takes to be taken care of. Never mind that she's the one who seems to be paying for everything as Dev takes her further out of her comfort zone and spends more time grieving for his dead wife than taking care of Deb.

Deb's insistence on needing a man to be happy — any man who will have her, it seems — extends to her daughters as well. Not only does she encourage Billie in her mission to keep a guy who couldn't care less about her, but she pushes Josie into being with her "boyfriend," Seb (Freddie Meredith). Even though Josie is gay and the thought of intimacy with Seb is physically nauseating to her, she stays with him and her need to be accepted by her mother oozes from the screen. 

It's a dysfunctional family that works, because unlike so many other comedies there's no sentimentality bringing these three women together or grounding them in reality. Emotions can run high (particularly where Billie is concerned), but at their core these characters are narcissistic and too caught up in caring what others think to ever stay in one funk for long. 

Along the way the show tackles all kinds of interesting threads. In addition to mental health and therapy it digs into death, abandonment, pregnancy, abortion, identity, female friendships, female rivalry, and even religion. It explores feelings by pushing them down, and questions what damage can do to a person when they fail to actually address it.

These women want something better for themselves, but they don't wallow in pity or claim that life is unfair. So along the way you can't help but root for them, even when they're being the worst. 

It's a unique and yes, brave, project unlike any other comedy currently on air or streaming. Between the bodily fluids and body hair there are plenty of hilariously uncomfortable moments. But this is a show that is also saying something: intergenerational trauma is real, and sometimes it's okay to just laugh about it.

Such Brave Girls is now streaming on Hulu.