Julia Davis is famous for creating some of the most uncomfortably bleak comedies of recent times. Now the star of Nighty Night is turning her dark powers to period drama in her new series Hunderby
The writer and performer Julia Davis is too good-natured to show it much, but she's plainly exasperated by descriptions of her work as "bleak" or "dark". They make it sound as if she's deliberately trying to be edgy, and this doesn't chime with her sense of herself. She enjoys watching old episodes of Friends, she insists; she's partial to 1980s movies and upbeat self-help books, and when she writes, she just writes what comes naturally. "I would never say, ooh, let's do something really dark," she says. Yet she is responsible for what are, without doubt, some of the most unsettling characters in contemporary comedy: smiling suburban sociopaths; meddlesome cold-eyed narcissists; horrifyingly mistreated spouses whose...
The writer and performer Julia Davis is too good-natured to show it much, but she's plainly exasperated by descriptions of her work as "bleak" or "dark". They make it sound as if she's deliberately trying to be edgy, and this doesn't chime with her sense of herself. She enjoys watching old episodes of Friends, she insists; she's partial to 1980s movies and upbeat self-help books, and when she writes, she just writes what comes naturally. "I would never say, ooh, let's do something really dark," she says. Yet she is responsible for what are, without doubt, some of the most unsettling characters in contemporary comedy: smiling suburban sociopaths; meddlesome cold-eyed narcissists; horrifyingly mistreated spouses whose...
- 8/10/2012
- by Oliver Burkeman
- The Guardian - Film News
Kevin Eldon has criticised the demise of Lizzie And Sarah. The comedy pilot, which also starred Julia Davis and Jessica Hynes, aired earlier this year on BBC Two and viewers campaigned online for a series to be ordered. However, Eldon told Stv that the BBC has decided not to ask for more episodes. "I don't think there's going to be much choice really," he said. "I mean, the BBC didn't like it and that's why they stuck it out at whatever time they stuck it out at. "I think at the moment there seems to be a climate of inoffensive, white, safe stuff going out, which Lizzie And Sarah wasn't, really. It was a bit bleak here and there - a bit relentless in places! Despairing. But very funny, I thought. But yeah, a lot of people did get online and said, 'We would like to see more of this',...
- 8/17/2010
- by By Catriona Wightman
- Digital Spy
… but the Shallow Grave actor is considering a move into comedy after primal scream soul-baring of Lennon Naked
Back in 1994, when Christopher Eccleston was playing a psychotic chartered accountant in Shallow Grave, he spent the best part of a day in a working mortuary pretending to be dead. There wasn't enough money to recreate the mortuary in a studio and, anyway, director Danny Boyle wanted to keep it real. So Eccleston, then 30 and best known for playing Derek Bentley in Let Him Have It three years earlier, was put in a drawer with a Glaswegian member of the crew.
"I was stark bollock naked and the Glaswegian, who was dressed in a parka, Doc Martens and jeans, kept saying, 'Are we finished? 'Cos I'm fucking freezing, by the way.' And all this time, I'm lying not only naked but next to a head that had recently been fished out of the River Clyde.
Back in 1994, when Christopher Eccleston was playing a psychotic chartered accountant in Shallow Grave, he spent the best part of a day in a working mortuary pretending to be dead. There wasn't enough money to recreate the mortuary in a studio and, anyway, director Danny Boyle wanted to keep it real. So Eccleston, then 30 and best known for playing Derek Bentley in Let Him Have It three years earlier, was put in a drawer with a Glaswegian member of the crew.
"I was stark bollock naked and the Glaswegian, who was dressed in a parka, Doc Martens and jeans, kept saying, 'Are we finished? 'Cos I'm fucking freezing, by the way.' And all this time, I'm lying not only naked but next to a head that had recently been fished out of the River Clyde.
- 6/18/2010
- by Amy Raphael
- The Guardian - Film News
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