My Mad Fat Diary

Rae Earl on My Mad Fat Diary

A secret diary in the 1980s, a bestselling book and now a TV show... Why are the musings of an overweight, obsessive-compulsive teen so enduring? Diarist Rae Earl talks to Sophie Davies.

Two days after the pool party, troubled teen Rae sets herself a romantic to-do list - putting Archie in pole position - and becomes more body-conscious than ever. This razor-sharp comedy drama combines visual ingenuity with a soundtrack that fleshes out Rae's struggles: as we see her unzipping a fat suit and stepping out, lean and toned, to Radiohead's Fake Plastic Trees, the lyrics twist the heartstrings until they snap: "If I could be who you wanted...'

Rae, the overweight teen with an unfortunate penchant for self-harming, believes all her dreams have come true when Archie asks her out on a date. Alas, it goes horribly, inevitably awry and ends in an agonising shower scene that made this viewer yelp. But the "blob with a gob" - which is how Rae describes herself to her psychiatrist - isn't one to wallow in self-loathing for long...

This is as uplifting as it is moving, although the banter and gimmicks won't be to everybody's taste.

The key to this inventive, likeable comedy drama is the finely wrought balance between humour and darkness. For every Oasis, there's a Radiohead and tonight, Rae's neuroses, anxieties and insecurities come pouring out. For a self-proclaimed best mate, Chloe's not the most tactful girl in the world. And if her casual words about Rae's size open the floodgates, a pub chat about sexual experience pulls them off their hinges. Rae needs to get laid, but might she have misunderstood the signals she's getting from one of her closest pals? My Mad Fat Diary is a breath of fresh air, and exactly the kind of thing E4 should be doing. One small caveat however: the Britpop-era anthems that pepper the action feel like a character in themselves. Just occasionally, they feel like a slightly overbearing one.

Rae Earl describes her childhood mental health issues

As a child, Rae Earl suffered from anxiety, delusions and OCD. After a short spell on an adult psychiatric ward, she decided to find her own way to deal with her demons.

My Mad Fat Diary - Whoever said that fat was funny?

If you like Skins, says E4, you'll like this teen memoir. Hmm. But C4's new drama is a dazzler.

Radio Times review

E4's big drama of the week, My Mad Fat Diary (Mondays) was about the agony of a teen whose struggle to be normal has made her sanity bend and break. Sharon Rooney was Rae Earl, whose real diary has been dramatised and moved from the 80s to 1996. The benefits of this weren't obvious: it made 32 the ideal viewer age, which is a bit old for E4, you'd think, and it wasn't a very careful period piece. Rae lusted after Archie, a hot geek whose spectacles, hair, speech ("Style it out!") and ironic pop covers on choppy acoustic guitar were all completely 2012.

Rae emerged from psychiatric hospital and tried to make friends, with the twin stigmas of her medical history and her size representing the teenage shame of not being able to hide that you're a freak. The "mad" and the "fat" were treated differently: Rae's shape got her into harmless, cartoon embarrassments, like getting stuck halfway down a slide at a pool party, which were immediately forgiven by her suspiciously compassionate new mates. She was better at fitting in than some teens ever are. She got invited to a pool party!

Much more acute were the scenes in the hospital between Rae and her tiny tomboy friend Tix (Sophie Wright). When Rae lost her nerve and broke back into the ward, Tix was tenderly furious that she would think of giving in. That this reaction came from a deep affection, forged by having admitted their terrors to each other, was vividly conveyed by Rooney and Wright and a lot more affecting than the drunken scrapes and lagered Britpop soundtrack in the outside world. We need to get Tix out of there.

Brilliantly holding this Frank-Spencer-In-The-Bell-Jar mash together, though, was future star Sharon Rooney, totally convincing as a teen, as a soul determined to avoid self-destruction, and as the sort of wildly libidinous beast young females rarely are on TV. Rae was the hunter and Archie was the prey: "I'd shag him," said Rae in one of the many salty inner monologues Rooney delivered with extra relish, "till there was nothing left except a pair of glasses and a damp patch." My Mad Fat Diary would be better telly if all the best stuff wasn't going on inside Rae's head, but Rooney created a vibe in which you forgave that and wanted her to win.

The second dip into this adaptation of a teenage Rae Earl's real-life diary. With BFF Chloe boasting of her tryst with a mystery man, Rae worries that she'll never attract a boyfriend as long as she considers herself little more than a "blob with a gob". Her fears briefly make way for delight when crush Archie asks her out on a date, only to return in a frenzied campaign to disguise her sexual inexperience. Sharon Rooney impresses once more as Rae in what is rapidly becoming a must-see series.

There was much to admire in My Mad Fat Diary, E4's new comedy drama about a binge-eating 16st teenage girl growing up in the Britpop era. Sharon Rooney, who plays the lead role of Rae Earl, already deserves to be on the Best Newcomer lists when awards season comes around again. And the soundtrack was well chosen. Although given the subject matter I was expecting some Feeder.

"Stick on Now 33. Are you kidding, it's got Father and Son by Boyzone on it." As someone who grew up with posters of Oasis, Pulp and Blur plastered on his bedroom wall, My Mad Fat Diary was a nostalgia-fest that really struck the mark. It was a Gallagher-esque strut down Britpop memory lane, which felt all the more cosy in the week that HMV went bust.

Ocean Colour Scene, Kula Shaker, lemon Hooch and cut-outs of Damon Albarn. Anyone who lived their teenage years between 1994 and 1997 would have felt right at home with this new E4 teen drama, which takes the diaries of Rae Earl and gives them a '90s twist.

Sharon Rooney makes her TV debut as awkward teen Rae, who has a history of mental health issues, a bonkers mum who sleeps with foreign lovers and goes on alphabet diets ("I started on 'S' because I got a load of scotch eggs on the cheap") and a group of mates who think that knowing their Eels from their Manic Street Preachers is all that really matters in the world.

British teen dramas work best when they capture the intense awkwardness and raging insecurities of adolescent life and My Mad Fat Diary does that with some serious style and a killer sense of humour. There's a dark edge to Rae's character as she deals with her demons and as she bumbles her way through teen crushes ("I want to sex his face") she's easy to root for.

The sheen, gloss and Hollywood looks of US teen dramas such as Glee or 90210 provide fun and escapism, but I can't take the stunning Lea Michele seriously as a teen role model. As if she's ever had a spotty back or a hangover that feels like "an orangutan being sick on my brain".

My only request for next week? Can we have some Shed Seven on the soundtrack please?