Scholars of such things may note that Daddy Issues (BBC Three) seems to kick off with a direct nod to Sex Education. Both shows open in medias res, with Aimee Lou Wood striving to get the most out of a sexual encounter. There’s one key difference. For the plane toilet hook-up in Daddy Issues, there’s no condom in play and, one missed period later, Gemma can’t find a single test kit that will give her a negative result.
So on one level this is a daft, deft comedy about a young, single Northern woman expecting a baby. “Having a baby,” a friend tells her, “is like being love-bombed by your own DNA.” There is no daddy other than her actual father Malcolm (David Morrissey), a spineless if well-meaning divorcee who moves in with Gemma to share the cost of living and to learn some life skills.
It’s an unusual set-up, for sure, but comedian Danielle Ward – whose first original series this is – carefully structures it as a picaresque narrative in which every episode tells a self-contained story. Gemma attends antenatal classes, goes on the hunt for a rich partner, has an accidental encounter with the married man who impregnated her, and so on and so forth.
It joins a growing conga line of comedy-dramas that are in effect replacing the regular sitcom. Fleabag, Am I Being Unreasonable?, I Hate Suzie, Rain Dogs, Starstruck – all are bracingly frank about genitalia and what gets done with them by young women on the hunt for love and/or empowerment. Disarmingly played by Wood, Gemma is much the sweetest of them, a self-respecting, pixieish Gen-Zer who deftly deals with all the bullies, freaks and weirdos the plot throws at her.
Morrissey, who so often embodies authority to a priapic degree, is a delightful revelation as a gamma-male without a plan or a clue. In a hilarious, nearly plausible sequence he struggles to understand the concept of a jacket potato. All the cast have fun, most of all Sharon Rooney as Gemma’s on-remand sister, Sarah Hadland as a hot-to-trot hairdresser and David Fynn as a bitter misogynist.
It gives away little to reveal that the final episode reaches full term, with a final twist that sets it up nicely for a second, well-merited series called Mummy Issues.
Daddy Issues is on BBC Three at 9pm tonight, and BBC One at 9.30pm on Friday; the full series is available on iPlayer now
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