Cash Holland

I was mystified by the new Sara Pascoe thing, Out Of Her Mind, and can only conclude that I am of the wrong gender or cultural sensibility to review it. Relentlessly, scattily modernist, with tricks such as meta-references to its own sitcom-ness, the breaking of the fourth wall, the "real" Sara Pascoe commenting on the "fictional" Sara's disaster of a life, it also felt very dated, just not in a good way.

Fictional Sara, who couldn't seem to decide whether she was bitterly life-cynical about being dumped 15 years ago or childishly, naively, irritatingly self-obsessed and rude, had to cope with the twin outrages of her sister becoming engaged and her best friend being pregnant, apparently events on some manner of end-of-days scale. Cue some stock catty rudeness about rings, dresses, weight, pinkness. The real Sara, meanwhile, got on with making some decent points, albeit while rollerskating in a pink leotard, about, say, how advertising makes women feel inferior in order to sell them stuff or how fairytales offer girls false stereotypes, yet both points agreed on, surely, in the last decades of the last century?

The show is almost saved by Juliet Stevenson as the mother, utterly lacking in self-awareness: indeed, the entire supporting cast are strong, though I could have done with more Cash Holland. Yet such things have been done better, in the last couple of years alone, by This Way Up, Catastrophe, I May Destroy You, even Motherland... hence my mystification, because so often Pascoe, a wise author in her own right, is the wittiest thing going on any panel show.

Review: Out Of Her Mind

As opening lines go, 'My name is Sara Pascoe and I'm going to destroy your faith in love' is as bold and unambiguous a statement of intent as you can get. And hardly the usual manifesto for what's ostensibly a sitcom about relationships.

Out Of Her Mind review

Continuing the recent surge of strong, female-led series, this six-parter highlights the distressing side of long-term singledom, via sharp, fourth wall-shattering observations.