Daddy Issues: a 'potent blend of wit and charm'

Aimee Lou Wood and David Morrissey in BBC Three's Daddy Issues

A 'modern odd-couple arrangement'

(Image credit: BBC / Fudge Park Productions / James Stack)

published 21 August 2024

"Always use a condom, kids," said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. That's the advice that comes through "loud and clear" from BBC Three's new sitcom "Daddy Issues".

The show follows Gemma (Aimee Lou Wood), a 24-year-old Stockport hairdresser who loves partying until one "bareback encounter in a plane toilet" means she winds up pregnant. This wouldn't be so bad if her housemate hadn't moved out, her mum hadn't "recently buggered off to foreign parts with a new boyfriend", and her sister wasn't in prison for trying to bump off her fiancé for an insurance pay-out. Left in dire straits, she decides to take on her newly divorced dad Malcolm (David Morrissey) as her flatmate.

This "modern odd-couple arrangement" helps the pair to survive, and a "touching" portrait begins to emerge as the duo start to mend their "fractured relationship". One of the show's "finest points" is that Malcolm's domestic ineptitude (he thinks jacket potatoes come in leather jackets) isn't portrayed merely for laughs but also to add to the invisible labour Gemma is forced to shoulder.

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"Daft, honest, funny and tinged with bleakness", the show delivers a "potent blend of wit and charm". Stereotypes are given a "twist"; Malcolm's "borderline incel" old landlord Derek, for example, is slightly more "vicious" than a typical "sitcom sexist". This makes everything feel more hard-hitting: "you will laugh, but you might also cry".

Morrissey is a "revelation" as the "weedy", well-meaning Malcolm and the "easy chemistry" between the father-daughter pair injects the writing with "added richness", said Julia Raeside on the i news site. And while the show can, at times, be sentimental, "sublime comic razorblades lurk within". "I zipped through all six seriously entertaining episodes in one afternoon and was left wanting more, much more."

Sometimes the storyline feels "a little disjointed", said Emma Loffhagen in the London Evening Standard. A "randomly inserted" single-episode subplot about Gemma's old school acquaintance who stalked her ex-boyfriend feels "neither funny nor relevant" and should really have been "left in the writers' room". Still, all in all "Daddy Issues" is a "sharp, sweet and incessantly witty take on parenthood, female friendships and mid-life crises".

There's an "appealing oddball silliness" to Danielle Ward's scripts, added Katie Rosseinsky in The Independent, which works well to balance out the show's "emotional heft". And there's lots of material left to explore: how will the "winning central duo" fare when the baby is born? "Hopefully it's just getting started."

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Irenie Forshaw is a features writer at The Week, covering arts, culture and travel. She began her career in journalism at Leeds University, where she wrote for the student newspaper, The Gryphon, before working at The Guardian and The New Statesman Group. Irenie then became a senior writer at Elite Traveler, where she oversaw The Experts column.