Television drama has come on a long way in the past few decades. We’re well past the point, for example, where characters need to be likeable to be compelling. Instead, via self-combusting leads such as Tony Soprano or Fleabag, all you need is someone who at least appears to be trying. Trying to get better, trying to change, trying to break the shackles of abuse or trauma – it doesn’t matter: everyone can empathise with striving, even in a racist murderer (Soprano) or a narcissist (Fleabag).
It makes Spent (BBC Two), a new six-part comedy-drama, an outlier, in that its lead character Mia Sinclair is caught in a tight spot… and seems dead set on doing absolutely nothing about it. Mia, played by Spent’s creator Michelle de Swarte, is a former model who has lived like Liberace in New York, been declared bankrupt and so returns home to the UK to escape her debts. Back at home on the council estate in Brixton, she discovers that no one feels particularly sorry for her.
And neither do we – Mia is one of the least likeable leads in television history, a woman who thinks the world owes her a living and a grand one at that. She’s rude, socially tone deaf and resolutely self-centred from the first minute of Spent to the last.
It is a remarkable feat of writing and performance to create such a sustained figure of antipathy, one who when she says to herself in episode four “I’m not a bad person,” most viewers will find themselves raising a quizzical brow.
To the earlier point: being a bad person doesn’t matter so long as we can still find a reason to root for our anti-hero. But Mia gives us nothing. The series is inspired by De Swarte’s own experiences as a model, and while there’s a gentle critique of the industry with its underage girls, repulsive men and eau de utter vacuousness, Mia still seems in thrall to it.
Crucially, for a series billed as a comedy-drama, Mia isn’t funny. You can forgive dislikeable leads a lot if they make you laugh (see Succession) but Spent sets up plenty of comedic situations – a teenage party, a disastrous circumcision ritual, some dog sitting; some actual dogging – without ever delivering the payload.
Likewise, De Swarte creates a terrific supporting cast around Mia – Juliet Cowan as her mum, Karl Collins as her dad, both with mental health issues; Amanda Wilkin as her best friend and one time lover Jo – but by the end they only serve as collateral. Each in turn is abused or manipulated by a character who dominates the drama without being anything like the most interesting person in it.
All episodes of Spent are on BBC iPlayer now
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