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Why I Love...Pulling

Tanya Franks, Rebekah Staton and Sharon Horgan in Pulling
  • Posted at 12:05pm
  • 22 April 2008
  • by RuthMargolis-RT
  • 2 comments

It turns out you should never judge a sitcom by its impossibly dull sit. Try not to nod off when I tell you that BBC3's Pulling is about three attractive but flawed metropolitan women who live together and make bad romantic decisions. That'll be Friends without men, then. Or a Sex and the City-inspired, aspirational romp. Roll on the unreasonably muscular conquests, sex talk and shoes that cost more than most people's houses.

Or not.

In fact there are plagues more appealing than the lifestyle and personalities touted by the daringly rank Pulling. There's no diddling about with girlie fecklessness here. This show blasts you with a reckless blend of mucky plot twists, disastrous liaisons (sex pests, drug addicts, uncontrollable weepers) and emotionally immature, despicable women. You'll hate them all.

There's Donna, a therapist's pick-and-mix, played by Sharon Horgan, who also co-writes the series. She dumped fiancé Karl - who then tried to hang himself in the house he'd just bought them - in season one. Now she won't leave him alone for fear that he might make something of himself or find new love. She's odious, self-obsessed and manipulative. Crucial to her success as a comic character is that Donna thinks Donna's great.

Then there's power-hungry but hapless Louise, who so badly wants to be more than just a waitress. Sounding a bit Rachel Green? Would Rachel have invited an artist to hang his portraits of faecal matter in Central Perk? Or invented a pornographic candy treat to launch herself as an entrepreneur?

Worst of all is Karen, the alcoholic primary-school teacher, who earlier this series befriended a cancerous cat, then killed it. When she's not finishing off felines, Karen's having sex with men who span the hopeless-to-hideous spectrum.

The flatmates are deluded and emotionally oafish. Each girl is so perpetually self-absorbed, she's prevented from caring too much about her friends' defects. So they stay together, their union cemented by lashing of booze and inertia.

But for all its mould-breaking revoltingness, Pulling and its protagonists come complete with slop-buckets full of pathos and soul. Donna and her expertly sculpted pals never lapse into cartoonish, joke-suffocated banter. Sometimes they'll be let off the leash and allowed to emote, but cute, cuddly moments are doggedly stamped out before climax. Redemption is never an option.

For me, taking time out to watch modern-day cockle-warming comedy is as appealing as tickling a tarantula. Sitcom, like stand-up, needs to evolve to stay fresh, and in 2008 well-crafted jokes, although essential, aren't enough. Once we were satisfied with Barbara Good's bucolic mishaps, Captain Mainwaring's pomposity and Dawn French's squealing and multiple chins; nowadays comedy has to work harder. It should be challenging, uncomfortable and acerbic.

Pulling is all of these, and it's come along at a time when Brit-com seems to have lapsed into post-The Office blandness (the depressingly ordinary Gavin and Stacey and bafflingly unfunny Harry Hill's TV Burp both got Bafta backslaps). Like Peep Show's Mark and Jeremy, currently the only other home-grown sitcom characters worthy of swooning accolades, Donna and pals push boundaries and are guffaws ahead of their cosy rivals.

Spank mediocrity's bottom: say hello to Pulling.

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  • Posted on 02 February 2009
  • at 6:27pm
  • by peski

"3 attractive but flawed metropolitan women"?

So who are this lot in the picture then?

  • Posted on 23 April 2008
  • at 11:20am
  • by The_Wise_Watcher

You are SO right. At last someone is talking sense about this incredible show. It's been ignored for far too long--probably because all of the main characters are women. FUNNY WOMEN.

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