'The Dry' Comes to Sundance Now in November

The Irish comedy-drama The Dry first caught our attention last spring, debuting on the soon-to-be-defunct BritBox UK. (Don't worry, it's not going away-away, it's just being folded into ITVX.) Starring Roisin Gallagher (The Fall), the eight-episode limited series hails from Element Pictures, the same company that brought Normal People and Conversations With Friends to BBC Three and Hulu. But unlike those Sally Rooney-penned romances, The Dry was starker, a story about sobriety and how the family you love are sometimes the ones who make staying that way hardest of all.

Gallagher plays Shiv Sheridan, a woman fighting to keep her alcoholism at bay. At the moment, she's five months, 17 days, AND six hours sober, a record about to be sorely tested when she heads home for her grandmother's wake. Though it's billed as a comedy, The Dry isn't the kind of gut-buster generally associated with that word, but the sort of painful black humor that barely cracks a smile, where the variety of jokes you make are the ones to keep from crying.

At the time it streamed on BritBox UK, there was no U.S. distributor lined up, and it wasn't sure if there would be, considering the series' very Irish-centric setting and story. However, AMC Networks has scooped it up as part of its niche streamer Sundance Now's November lineup, with the episodes streaming simultaneously on the parent company's flagship service AMC+.