Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Rain Dogs’ On HBO, Where A Woman And Her Daughter Navigate Her Crazy Life

TV loves to give us shows about “found family.” Some of them may be relatives, but usually it’s friends, or at least friends in a dysfunctional relationship that has each other’s backs in interesting ways. A new HBO/BBC series has one of those families.

RAIN DOGS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We pan down from the London skyline to a housing project. “The thing is, bubs, if you lead an interesting life, people will always be chasing after you,” a woman says to her daughter.

The Gist: Costello Jones (Daisy May Cooper) is telling this to her daughter Iris (Fleur Tashjian) as they’re stuffing as many things as they can into garbage bags. They’re about to get evicted from their flat for not paying rent, and the bailiffs are pounding on the door. They manage to get what they need and leave. She drops the keys at the bailiffs’ feet and tosses the eviction order over the railing.

This isn’t the first time this has happened to the perpetually broke Costello, and it seems Iris just rolls with the punches, even as they nick a ride from a cab; Costello tells Iris to pretend to be sick, then they run when the cab pulls over. At a convenience store, Costello’s card is denied as she tries to by some crisps and get an extra tenner, and a construction worker she knows offers them a space in his flat. She’s skeptical but a bit desperate, so she agrees to see it.

What she’d really like to do is crash with her friend Gloria (Ronke Adekoluejo). But Gloria’s phone is in her car; Gloria is on the West End, waking up in a phone booth, still wearing the dress she wore the night before.

In the meantime, one of Costello’s other friends, Shelby (Jack Farthing) leaves prison after a year stint on an assault charge. She’s more or less Costello’s soulmate and a de facto father to Iris, but she doesn’t want to reconnect with him post-prison. He’s got money — his lives with his sick mom is from old money, and he gambles at mahjong — but Shelby wants no part of it. He wants to connect, though, as he goes and visits Iris outside her school and gives her 20 pounds.

But desperate times call for desperate measures, and she meets him in a bathroom where he’s getting a blowjob from a nebbishy guy via a glory hole. Even though she’s basically checking in, and he offers her money through the hole (eww!), she still tells him to stay away from her and Iris.

But the guy who offered her and Iris the room in his flat is about as creepy as you might think, giving her his mom’s nighty as party of the “terms and conditions.” It’s then that she gives Shelby a ring to bail her out of this situation.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Rain Dogs gives off a similar shaggy “found family” vibe as shows like I May Destroy You, albeit without that show’s ugly side (at least not yet). The scratching-to-get-by vibe is reminiscent of both the British and American versions of Shameless.

Our Take: Written by Cash Carraway, Rain Dogs puts out a vibe that, yeah, Costello and Iris are constantly trying to find a place to crash, are perpetually broke, and their family unit is the two of them and a rich gay dude with anger issues, but the two of them just keep on keeping on. It shouldn’t be funny, but it is. And it’s a whole lot warmer of a vibe than other comedies that feature actual blood-related families.

Part of that is Carraway’s writing, which is accessible without snark. Costello spends the first episode resisting being dependent on Shelby. She really, really doesn’t want to use his money or depend on him for emotional support. But she also knows he has her back no matter what, which is why she doesn’t hesitate to call him when things get weird at that construction worker’s flat.

Cooper plays Costello as someone who wants a better lot in life, but just plows through the lot she has now instead of feeling sorry for herself. She works part-time at a peep show establishment, which is one of what is likely a few different jobs. She’s trying to find success the right way, but is finding it nearly impossible. It’s a performance that reminds us a bit of Bridget Everett in Somebody Somewhere, and it’s always refreshing to see a character who is grinding away despite the adversity facing her.

Fleur Tashjian is a revelation as Iris, a supremely confident kid who plays a kid who has dreams, too, as she and Costello try to imagine the pools and pianos in the wealthy homes they pass in the taxi. She’s loyal but realistic, but she’s also still a ten-year-old, and Tashjian strikes that balance well.

It does feel like, as we see Costello, Iris and Selby reintegrate their odd family unit, there’s going to be circumstances that will be even funnier than what we saw. Will it tug at our hearts? Maybe, in an odd way; we did love to see Selby run right out and rescue Costello and Iris from the creep, even if he does so a bit violently. But the first episode shows a whole lot of potential in both of those respects.

Sex and Skin: Besides the blowjob, of which we just see feet, there’s nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Costello busts her way back into the flat, intending on paying off her debts. As she and Iris stand on the balcony, the bailiffs come knocking again. She looks through the mail slot and says, “What the fuck are you looking at?”

Sleeper Star: Adrian Edmonson plays Lenny, an older guy who walks around London in his PJs and a trench coat; he pulls Gloria out of the phone booth and tells her, “Let’s get you another drink, before the before the blues set in.”

Most Pilot-y Line: Every time Selby passed Costello a cigarette or money through the glory hole, we just cringed. Cringe-funny the first time, just cringey the other four times.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Rain Dogs promises to be an interesting examination in a certain kind of found family that’s by turns darkly funny and warmly inspiring.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.