Catastrophe: Season 1 (2015)

Over the last couple of years, it feels as if queerness has increasingly become the subject of both mainstream and “quality” television, as increasingly flexible, provisional and promiscuous modes of distribution have opened up the possibility of a perpetual “transitioning” that has become an end and object in itself. Some series, such as Transparent, Orange is the New Black and I Am Cait, have responded with a radical flux between and amongst queer and heterosexual identites, a flux that often finds its best spokesperson in transgender or genderqueer orientations. Other series are more interested in envisaging queers and heterosexuals simply co-existing, although they might tap into the genderqueer flux in other, more deflected ways, often at the point where stand-up, sitcom and sketch comedy collide, as in Louie and Inside Amy Schumer, or where the digital-urban sprawl plays a major role, as in Togetherness and Hello Ladies. In both cases, however, there is a utopian, collective yearning that sets them apart from a third brand of series, which seems more interested in trying to somewhat competitively convince us that heterosexuality itself is the queerest orientation possible, often by way of a roundabout return to the insular nuclear couple. Although shows like Up All Night and You’re the Worst fall into that category – which also hung around the later seasons of The Office and Parks and Recreation - it’s arguably reached critical mass with Catastrophe, already slated to be one of the most acclaimed comedies of 2015. Set in London, Catastrophe stars real life friends Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney as Sharon and Rob, an Irish school teacher and American advertising consultant who have a one-week stand, only to find out that Sharon has become pregnant, at which point Rob decides to relocate to England, marry her and help raise the child. As might be expected, various comic and not so comic crises ensue - Rob dealing with his residency, Sharon breaking the news to her friends and family - but what's unusual about the series is that despite the fact that this couple meet and develop in the most provisional, promiscuous and precarious of ways – in a country that neither of them really thinks of as home – they quickly feel like an utterly conventional and even conservative couple, even or especially as they continually remind each other how different they supposedly are. Like being around a couple who are continually anxious to remind you that their relationship doesn’t exclude you, their endless assumption of difference from the heterosexual norm actually becomes more suffocating than a less self-conscious heterosexual couple, not least because virtually every other character in the series is somewhat moronic or abject, an opportunity for raised eyebrows or incredulous reaction shots, in what often feels like an anti-ensemble cast, an ensemble that exists only to reiterate the suffocatingly self-aware isolation of the central couple. What’s even odder is that most members of this anti-ensemble cast have some kind of queer quirk – a taste for man-dates, an addiction to rectal massages – and yet even that doesn’t breed any kind of inclusive queerness but just reiterates the self-conscious originality of the central couple, their unwillingness to really – genuinely – depend on any wider community or collectivity, as if they had absorbed or harvested queerness rather than truly communing or collaborating with it. Of course, there are very funny moments – and poignant moments – not least because of Horgan and Delaney’s friendship, which you can glimpse through and within the characters they play. Still, that often makes it feel more insular too, more of an inside joke – unlike, say, the exquisitely relaxed, blissed-out vibe of Doll and Em – as they long to be something other than a heterosexual nuclear couple, but can’t envisage anything other than a heterosexual nuclear couple either, in what finally feels a bit like a capitalist realist romantic sitcom, an alternative-styled television series in which there are really no alternatives.