Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsBest Adult Comedy Ever!
Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2017
Created by actors Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney, who also play the two key figures, Catastrophe is a boisterous emotional rollercoaster with more heart than a comedy needs. Yet it works hilariously. My wife and I discovered this from the ton of choices available on Amazon and we were taken with it in the first show.
Rob is an American doing business in England for his company, a new and struggling ad agency that needs all the fresh contacts it can get.
Sharon (both actors use their real first names) is a nursery school teacher on a night out on the town who finds herself entirely sideswipped by Rob's knucklehead charm and boyish enthusiasm.
He's loaded with self-confidence that somehow isn't quite attached to any level of competence, yet he isn't arrogant about it.
She's has the same self-confidence while harboring jaded neurosis. Sharon is slightly older than Rob, and feels she's seen it all and been through it all. For both of them, they are just another in a long string of lovers and that's how they accept life. After all, they are both approaching middle age, were never married, never had children, in that sense, they're both failures in the eyes of their friends and family.
But what could bring them together? How about their naivety? Upon their first meeting they launch into a week long whirlwind of an affair and soon after Sharon calls to deliver the news. She's pregnant.
What is she going to do about it? She's going to have the baby. After all, at her age she may never get another chance to have one. What is Rob going to do about it? Is he at least going to help out with money?
Yes but not in the way Sharon hopes for. Rob is not about to be a paycheck Pop. He flies back to England and lays his cards on the table. I don't know you, you don't know me, but there's going to be a baby, let's give this a shot!
The baby combined with their view of their own lives and how their peers view them, provides the stress pressure that makes their unexpected relationship work. This may be the last chance they have to grow up.
That's the car that delivers this charmingly crass comedy where the two main characters are as unknown to each other as they are to us, making every minute a discovery for all involved. They know that they're hot for each other, but they don't know if they can love each other, and the difficulties of a first time pregnancy brings a bushel of its own problems.
I've never seen adult comedy handled better in a TV show.