Jessica Knappett’s sitcom tracks Meg, Bunny and Laura as they crawl through their post-uni years in Leeds, trading mortarboards for promotional chicken suits and nights that end in kebab-shop tears. The first series landed on E4 at Halloween 2013 and the channel kept renewing the misery: six-episode runs arrived every autumn until 2016, each premiere quietly dropped on 4oD a week early. The writing room was crowded: Knappett, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Emerald Fennell and others fed the women a steady diet of humiliation, from nightclub punch-ups to sexually inept magicians.
The show never left the city: flats above takeaways, call-centre cubicles and the same three pubs form the whole universe. Lydia Rose Bewley’s bubble-headed Bunny treats every setback as a photo-op, Lauren O’Rourke’s Laura clings to a boyfriend who sells tyres and believes in aliens, while Meg, Knappett’s on-screen alter ego, ricochets between her married ex and a man who owns only one towel. Their parents drift in and out, led by Bob Mortimer as Meg’s weary dad, dispensing paracetamol and bleak truths.
Channel 4 quietly pulled the plug in 2017 after 24 episodes; Knappett announced the news on Twitter with a gif of a bin fire. No finale, no graduation, just the trio still skint and still arguing in the back of a taxi, the meter running.
Production Details
E4 / 4 Seasons / 24 Episodes / 2013
Created by: Jessica Knappett
Writer(s): .mw-parser-output .plainlist ol, .mw-parser-output .plainlist ul{line-height:inherit;list-style:none;margin:0;padding:0}.mw-parser-output .plainlist ol li, .mw-parser-output .plainlist ul li{margin-bottom:0} Jessica Knappett Phoebe Waller-Bridge Joe Tucker Lloyd Woolf Emerald Fennell Ben Knappett
Producer(s): Sam Pinnell
Main Cast
Jessica Knappett as Meg
Lydia Rose Bewley as Bunny
Lauren O'Rourke as Laura
Philip McGinley as Mark
Joseph Macnab as Pete
Emerald Fennell as Lizzie
Elisabeth Hopper as Kate
Louisa Connolly-Burnham as Sienna
Badria Timimi as Shami
Tom Binns as DJ Paul
Janet Whiteside as Margaret
Jacob Edwards as Concierge
