'Such Brave Girls' Season 2 to Brave Summer on Hulu

One of the unsung silver linings of the 2020 pandemic is that it forced the BBC to think differently about what it greenlit when things began to return to a new normal in 2021. Between the need to restart production quickly and the Black Lives Matter movement prompting the public broadcaster to seek out shows from new and diverse voices, the early 2020s have been marked by surprise hit comedy series that one suspects would never have been picked up otherwise. Series like Boarders, Am I Being Unreasonable, and Black Ops have all landed multiple seasons and American streaming homes, and now so has Such Brave Girls, which debuts Season 2 in July.

Written by Kat Sadler, a freelance comedy writer for hire, with the help of her real-life sister Lizzie Davidson, a struggling actor stuck doing children's parties who couldn't get anyone to give her an audition, much less a role, Such Brave Girls came out of nowhere when it debuted in 2023 and went on to score Sadler her first BAFTA. The show is technically semi-autobiographical: Sadler's character Josie's mental health collapse is drawn from her own pandemic-era trauma, and Davidson's character, Billie, also works as a children's entertainment character for hire. The family debt is also drawn from the sisters' real-life financial struggles.

But the key to the series is that it has a highly straightforward premise: Josie trying to come to terms with her LGBTQ+ sexuality in a family of incurious straights. It proceeds to deal with this in the most unenlightened way possible, shifting from cringe comedy to slapstick and back, often within the same scene. Season 2 promises to go full Spinal Tap and turn everyone's most ignorant opinions and choices up to 11.