Big Mood review – Nicola Coughlan is a force of nature
The Derry Girls actor is funny to her bones in this sitcom about mental health and long-term friendship. It’s full of lovely touches, if not enough nuance
In the opening episode of Big Mood, struggling playwright Maggie (Derry Girls’ and Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan) is on a mission. And on a scooter. But that was an expensive mistake, so she gives it away to a passerby. She needs her best friend Eddie (It’s a Sin’s Lydia West) to take the day off work, running the bar her late dad left her, and come with her to her old secondary school, where she has been invited to make a speech about her career in the theatre. Maggie is hoping to meet her old history teacher, Mr Wilson, on whom she developed a passionate teenage crush after he saved her from lecherous maths teacher Mr Phillips. “Because he wouldn’t shag a child!” she beams, full of blissful memory. “Wow,” says Eddie. “We should nominate him for a Pride of Britain award.”
Off they go, and a parade of increasingly manic hijinks ensue. Which is very much expected sitcommery until Eddie asks, as they escape the now chaos-filled school, if Maggie is, well, manic. And she is. She has bipolar disorder, and has stopped taking her meds because she can’t write while she’s on them. Thus, we find ourselves in this bleaker territory for the rest of the six-episode series, which explores the limits of a decade-long friendship between the two women as the pressures of post-20s life start to mount. “I fix problems – you have them,” says Eddie cheerily at the start. But no relationship can survive such a state for ever.