Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Billie Piper, Daniel Ings, Leila Farzad, Matthew Jordan-Caws, Lorraine Ashbourne, Phil Daniels, Douglas Hodge, Blake Harrison, Elle Piper, Katy Trafford, Bessie Carter, Layton Williams, Omari Douglas, Reza Diako, Gary Lamont, Jolyon Coy, Ayesha Antoine, Angela Sant’Albano, Yasser Zadeh, Tobi Ejirele, Emmanuel Kome, Fred Fergus, Anastasia Jille, Peter Caulfield, Jude Mack, Elijah W Harris, Bea Svistunenko, Craig McCulloch, Lucy Martin, Sandra Huggett, Ambika Mod.
It is perhaps to be thankful that for the vast majority of us, someone like Suzie Pickles is but a figure to whom we might only come across when we are confronted with when they make a bee line to inject concern and chaos into our lives.
Lucy Prebble’s continuing dominance as one of Britain’s most undaunted playwrights and television script writers is such that her work finds ways to impress in ways that others would shrink away from confronting. From Secret Dairy Of A Call Girl and through to the stamp of brilliance to be found in I Hate Suzie, and its subsequent 2022 sequel of I Hate Suzie Too, the precious relationship between her and Billie Piper is one of glorious trust.
The phenomenon of its predecessor caught the public imagination, and in the three-part series of I Hate Suzie Too, the continuing spiral of chaos, commotion, and turmoil that surrounds the once famous child actor once more is a production that showcases the issue of a woman living on the seat of her nerves. The damage inflicted upon her by her own actions and those visited upon her by the fallout of the breakup her marriage, and the reflection of narcissism and selfishness that comes from Suzie’s latest venture, as she grasps the straw of celebrity culture as she dances her way back into the hearts and minds of the British public.
Whilst Suzie Pickles, and her family and friends, are a nightmare to avoid, the television viewer cannot but help be drawn to her drama, to the personal car crash that unfolds before them, and it is one that is beautifully captured by the cast, including terrific performances by Douglas Hodge, Daniel Ings, the excellent Leila Farzad, who arguably is the voice of reason in a world crumbling at the seams, and for Billie Piper herself, for in the space of three hours of television the cracks of respectability and the façade of showing a best face to the world, slowly and desperately is widened and eventually breaks completely.
It is in the final few moments that the disturbing emotional collapse is caught, and it is one of heartbreak, in a way almost as worthy a television moment as Bill Treacher’s Arthur when he suffers his first television breakdown in Eastenders; and with this in mind the sheer talent of Lucy Prebble, the fierce observation of the writer, is confirmed.
I Hate Suzie Too is the voyeurism framed by the mass media and the intrusion of the psyche, compelling and unnerving, and class 21st Century television.
Ian D. Hall