She’s done young desperate sordid singledom (the glorious Pulling); hooking up, marriage, parenthood (Catastrophe); Divorce is the next logical step for Sharon Horgan. As a subject for comedy I mean, not life choice. No part this time, she just gave birth to it. And it’s American (HBO, Sky Atlantic here).
Frances (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Robert (Thomas Haden Church) have reached a bitter impasse in their marriage. The kids are adolescent and uncommunicative, the big suburban house in Westchester County echoes with resentment. Bad sex – and the city’s a way away.
Frances does have an escape – an antipodean academic lover named Julian (Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement) who makes his own granola, which she seems to think is a good thing. But when she offers herself up as a whole serving – oats, nuts, honey, everything, there and available every morning, as opposed to just an occasional snack – he’s lost his appetite. Asshole.
First a party, the 50th birthday of friend Diane whose own marriage to Nick has gone beyond impasse and beyond hope. She’s drunk; he’s mean; their beautiful modern glass-fronted house provides a perfect view into a relationship in its death throes. Almost literally: Diane pulls a gun, it goes off, narrowly missing Robert and triggering a heart attack in her husband. Triggering, in Robert, thoughts about his own mortality, and, in Frances, the realisation that she’s not quite ready to give up: “I want to save my life while I still care about it.”
The party scene is very funny, in a hideous way. I’m not sure the gun was necessary. This kind of brutally real comedy should be confident enough in its characters and in its language not to need a stunt like that which might risk tipping it towards farce. But then this is the US; perhaps that is normal.
Otherwise Divorce won’t have you lolling in the aisles. It’s as bleak and dark and chilling as the New York (state) winter outside the windows. Nor am I feeling much warmth, or sympathy, for either lead – SJP’s Frances, especially. I can see what she’s going through, without caring enough. Even her kids don’t like her very much. That was the joy of Catastrophe: though it was a catastrophe, Horgan and Rob Delaney brought humanity, humour and even love to it – and I loved them too. Here I’m finding THC’s Robert easier to identify with, but that may be about recognition – one angry, simple, blundering, mediocre, middle-aged male to another …
That is the power of Divorce: its truth. If you’re round about the midlife stage yourself, or you’ve been in a relationship for a while, and it’s not quite how it was, and maybe you hate their effing guts, then this will all hit home to hurting point. Hey Sharon, can’t wait for the next one. What will it be? Menopause? Followed by Fuddled, Incontinence and Death, in that order.
