Julie Dray

In many ways Crashing is like a traditional house share sitcom with plenty of mismatched characters having little in common other than the space they live in. However what separates Crashing from the plethora of past flatshare sitcoms is that the characters are all living as property guardians in a disused hospital. I did find the way that Phoebe Waller-Bridge introduced this concept was quite heavy-handed in some respects as the strait-laced Kate (Louise Ford) and obnoxious estate agent Sam (Jonathan Bailey) attempted to explain their situation in one of the opening scenes. Meanwhile Waller-Bridge's Lulu arrived at the hospital as an old friend of Kate's fiancée Anthony (Damian Molony) and was presented as a possible threat to their future together. Of the characters my initial favourite has to be the uninhibited French artist Melody (Julie Dray) whose one-liners provided some of the only highlights of this first episode. Rounding up the group were nervous diabetic Fred (Amit Shah) and Kate's recently divorced colleague Colin (Adrian Scarborough) who has already formed an odd bond with Melody. I did feel that Waller-Bridge was fighting somewhat of a losing battle with the first episode of Crashing primarily as she had so much plot to get through and so many characters to introduce. As the opening episode was only about twenty-three minutes long I don't think I really got to know any of the leads and therefore I wasn't as invested as I possibly should have been. That being said there were flashes of greatness layered within the patchy first episode as Waller-Bridge revealed the complexities that lay behind the seemingly annoying Sam and the highly strung Kate. I personally feel that Crashing deserved a longer amount of time for its opening instalment as it suffered from rushed storytelling and under-developed characters. I think that Waller-Bridge's script showed flashes of promise and that's why I'm going to give Crashing a second go however it feels that if her show had a longer running time then the characters and story would be given more room to breathe.