Out Of Her Mind

Sara Pascoe interview

Sara Pascoe talks about her father, her fears growing up and how she got her big break in the latest edition of The Big Issue.

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.

TV review: Out Of Her Mind

Sara Pascoe tries to destroy your faith in love with new sitcom.

Review: Out Of Her Mind

There's a nasty sexist streak throughout: all the women except Sara just guzzle white wine between their Zumba classes. And what Juliet Stevenson is doing in this sitcom sludge is hard to imagine, unless she wanted to prove she can do an Essex accent.

Out Of Her Mind review

Rollerblading ringmaster of confessional comedy.

Out Of Her Mind: sitcom has cynicism that wears thin

The comedian's new BBC show follows other confessionals like Fleabag and I Hate Suzie, but it isn't entertaining because you don't see yourself in it, says Charlotte Cripps.

Out Of Her Mind takes us down the rabbit hole

In spite of Sara repeatedly reminding us it is her programme, she has written a script that allows the entire cast to shine.

TV review: Out Of Her Mind Series 1 Episode 1

The whole series is available to watch on iPlayer too and given how fantastic this opening episode is I imagine I'll have binged it all within an exceedingly short time, as Pascoe has created something truly special here.

Sara Pascoe interview

The comedian talks to Isobel Lewis about playing herself in her new sitcom opposite King Joffrey from Game Of Thrones, the future of left-wing comedy on the BBC and why society sees people who have abortions as selfish.