Weeds: a brilliantly scripted and performed exploration of family and suburban secrecy
Warning: this blog contains some mild season two spoilers.
OK, great sitcom mums - who've you got? Roseanne? Mrs Boswell? Joy Hickey? All well and good, but for me, Nancy Botwin, the dope-dealing widow from LA, played by Mary-Louise Parker, gets the nod - and her return to our screens could barely be more welcome. Showtime's comedy series Weeds returned to Sky One last night and if that doesn't ring any bells then you need to start investigating. Because Weeds is one of the best sitcoms of recent times - a brilliantly scripted and performed exploration of family, suburban secrecy and the tarnished glamour of the underworld. The show follows recently widowed lone parent Nancy as she embarks upon a new career as chief dope dealer in Agrestic, the identikit LA suburb where she raises her boys Shane and Silas.
But she's not quite alone - her husband's feckless brother Andy makes up the loose family unit as a kind of inappropriate surrogate father. Andy is the cool uncle every young boy should have - exactly the kind of figure who can give you that crucial talk about dating smart chicks. Having Andy take Shane to a brothel for his first sexual experience is risky TV but it comes off fabulously. As did a strangely touching relationship between Silas and his deaf girlfriend Megan in season one, never ignoring her hearing impairment but never obsessing over it.
Missing Weeds means you miss out on Nancy's son Shane showing how you really give a graduation speech. And you miss out on acquainting yourself with Celia Hodes, Nancy's ultra respectable but deeply flawed friend. Celia's attempts to make her daughter lose weight and not become a lesbian are some of the highlights of the show. Poor Celia is unaware that her husband Dean is part of Nancy's operation as both customer and legal adviser, with mutual friend councilman Doug Wilson providing the financial advice. Nancy corrupts half the Agrestic illuminati.
What's fascinating about Weeds is how the people in Nancy's drug-running operation become like an extended family, complementing her real one. A widowed single mother selling dope yet still doing a good job of raising her kids subverts the sitcom norms. Nancy's criminal activity actually liberates her - she doesn't need a boss or a man, she has her family, she has her operation and that's all she needs. What started out as an act of desperation becomes a career and lifestyle choice. Season two takes us into darker territory while still managing to be funny, shocking and occasionally inspiring. If the last series of My Family had you on suicide watch, Weeds will give you a reason to live and love your telly again.
