Channel 4
Run promises “very strong language with violence from the start and throughout”. Oh Channel 4 how you spoil us! Four related tales on consecutive nights set amongst the deprived – or should that be DEPRAVED? No, I think we’ll stick with deprived. Carol (Olivia Colman), is a stressed lone parent clocking in as a shelf stacker in a warehouse. She says words like fuck and cunt in the all-too-familiar manner of the stressed prole. Plinky piano lets you know that life is hard as life gets. Is one of those dramas the British excel at that starts out with everyone miserable as hell and then things take a turn for the worse. Nights out at karaoke numb the pain but let’s face it Carol’s as fucked as a shifty looking black kid in Florida.
Her scrote sons Terry and Dean talk like Dappy and act, like, crappy. Dean roughhouses his girlfriend Tracy, Terry is a shiftless layabout and most unforgivable of all they don’t appreciate Carol’s green curry that she got out of the Jamie Oliver book. What a pair of shits. Dirtbox deadbeat dad Kieran isn’t much help although he is played by Arby from Utopia (Neil Maskell to IMDb and his mum).
Her scrote sons Terry and Dean talk like Dappy and act, like, crappy. Dean roughhouses his girlfriend Tracy, Terry is a shiftless layabout and most unforgivable of all they don’t appreciate Carol’s green curry that she got out of the Jamie Oliver book.
It’s no surprise when Turdville and Dean kick a foreigner to death for looking at them funny. The boys shrug it off but Carol finds bloody clothes in the laundry the next day. Then she hears about the dead shitbird on the estate whose name no one knows. Carol may be deeply thick and a member of the working class but even she can figure this one out. She has raised two racist Thai curry hating killers. CID come a-knocking. All of a sudden she’s living Kate Bush’s Mother Stands for Comfort. Does she shop the worthless pieces of shit or stay loyal to her vile spawn?
It’s a real laugh a minute opener this. Misery, hate and phlegm as far as the eye can see. Nothing in the world wrong with that of course. Coleman is a solid angry chavlette, Arby is impressively appalling and while the two sons don’t exactly convince the whole thing is grimmer than a 19 hour retrospective comprising the best work of Lames Cordung, Blandrew Stinkin and Blowseph Whines.
The verdict: Run down.
Marks out of 10: 7.5