Pulling: Rebekah Staton as Louise, Sharon Horgan as Donna and Tanya Franks as Karen. Photograph: BBC
Like Little Miss Jocelyn, Pulling is a BBC3 comedy which has found its way on to the BBC2 schedule - the first series begins a run of repeats tonight. But do the similarities end there?
Probably: Pulling is funny. Not "funny" in a let's-repeat-this-catchphrase-often-enough-while-cueing-the-canned-laughter way. Neither does it resort to questionable caricatures seemingly based on some cultural or racial stereotype. No, it's "funny ha-ha" and "funny peculiar" assisted by a healthy portion of bite-knuckle-with-sheer-embarrassment-I-can't-bear-to-watch funny.
Often akin to No Angels with both No Nurses and No Morals, this actually revolves around a main character played brilliantly by (the series' co-writer) Sharon Horgan alongside her equally dysfunctional flatmates (brought to life by Tanya Franks and Rebekah Staton). We could keep with Jocelyn Jee Esien's Roger Hargreaves-esque theme and describe those roles as Little Miss Hapless, Little Miss Alky and Little Miss Stalker, yet they're actually known here as Donna, Karen and Louise.
The writing is sharp and the language is coarse yet it's that ever-changing "sit" in this sitcom that provides those (never pre-recorded) laughs. Pulling is seriously uncomfortable viewing at times (breakdowns, suicide attempts, stalking, the actions of the kind of family members that can only be described as "Lynne Perrie meets Wolverine", etc) yet it's definitely worth persevering with. Not for a happy ending of course. Maybe that will come with the second series that the BBC has already commissioned. Although I seriously doubt it: this is "black comedy" in the truest sense.
