Breeders review, HeyUGuys
As a childless twenty-something, the sight of parents struggling with their sprogs – no matter how innocent, how adorable – fills me with empathy, dread, and schadenfreude. These feelings amplify to entertained screeches when watching Breeders, Sky One’s new comedy about the undermentioned awfulness of child-rearing, created by Thick of It favourites Chris Addison and Simon Blackwell. Be warned: this could put you off having kids for a while. I haven’t felt such a staunch aversion to becoming a parent since watching Jenna Coleman carry a pram up those Sisyphean steps in BBC’s The Cry; the pain and aggravation looks like the most annoying kind of horror movie. Breeders, at least, finds the funny in the madness.
Martin Freeman, who plays fed-up father Paul, birthed the idea for the series in a dream about going upstairs to tell off his kids. This is the starting point, opening with Paul readying himself, in the middle of the night, to shout at his noisy offspring. He tries to talk himself out of it (“Don’t do this, mate … You scream, they cry, you hate yourself”), but it’s a necessary evil, a horrible duty of parenthood. What comes next, on the contrary, isn’t necessary at all, but it’s so, so understandable: Paul opens the bedroom door and unleashes an uproarious avalanche of expletives on his small, pre-teen children. A silence passes… then Paul apologises.
