Human Remains is one of the best comedies of the past 10 years, though it hardly ever gets the recognition it deserves. Maybe it's because it only ran to six episodes, or because it never seems to get repeated, or because Rob Brydon and Julia Davis eclipsed their work here with later projects. But my DVD is scratched to bits from being borrowed by so many people and it's always hard to get it back without resorting to threatening behaviour.
Nine years on and it remains an oddity, unlike anything that came before or after, though plenty have adopted its mockumentary style and talent for finding humour in the macabre and melancholy. It's comedy so black that it's hard to see how it even got commissioned in the first place. Imagine the meetings: "Episode one is about an aristocrat with vaginismus ..." It says a lot about the talents of its creators that it made it to air.
But what really stands out is its unrelenting bleakness. You can tell that Davis has been inspired by Pinter at his nastiest. My favourite episode, All Over My Glasses, follows the wedding preparations of a couple in Wales. But Stephen (Brydon) despises Michelle (Davis), who doesn't seem to notice, because she's too busy mourning Princess Diana: "Why her? Why not me?" And when it all gets too horrible to watch, there's a well-timed spot of slapstick, with a wedding dance to R Kelly's Bump & Grind. It has the perfect balance of humour and horror.
Human Remains is the antithesis of bland, focus-group TV comedy. It's depressing, the characters are repulsive, and the stories are about death, swinging, depression, cancer and curly-sausage casseroles. But it works. Davis continued to shock with her next project, the brilliant Nighty Night, but that was more outrageous than misanthropic, and it never had quite the same impact on me. Human Remains is a high point for all involved. The DVD is on Amazon for under a fiver at the moment too, so it's about time I replaced mine.
