Things You Should Have Done star admits she sometimes goes too far with dark comedy about "awful things”

Lucia Keskin is not your average 24-year-old. By 23, the YouTube sensation had already amassed an impressive online following, landed her first BBC Three series, Things You Should Have Done, and went onto win a BAFTA for Best Rising Star for her performance. All from her childhood bedroom.

Keskin is now back demonstrating her signature deadpan humour as her alter-ego, Lucia (or Chi) in season 2, as a recently bereaved stay-at-home-daughter who is an adult-in-progress as she works through a list of tasks her dead parents have left her to accomplish.

The premise is desperately sad: both of Chi’s parents die in a car crash in the first episode, leaving her the sole owner (and grown up) of the house. But she has no life skills whatsoever, every task from finding a job to learning to drive leads to woefully inappropriate scenarios, all while her vulture of an aunty, Karen (played tremendously by Selin Hizli), circles around her to try and inherit the house.

With a “face like depression” (as noted in the series), the multi-hyphenate talent admits that it’s often hard to strike the balance between the tragedy and comedy, as she has a tendency to take the dark humour to extremes.

“That's where I have to have people tell me because I will just go as dark as possible and I see no issue, and they're like, ‘no, not that, you can’t do that,” Keskin tells RadioTimes.com. “But I just think the best, most awful things in life are the best to get through with laughing and taking the piss out of them. I’ve always viewed it that way.”

“I’ll just say ‘Yeah, let’s joke about that’ and they’re like ‘No, actually, we can’t.’ I did get away with quite a lot, but I was trying to push it.”

Season 2 opens with a sense of deja vu as the same two police officers turn up to break the news that there has been another untimely death. This time Chi’s aunty has died, after tripping over a hoover cord and falling down a flight of 86 stairs.

“I just thought it would be so ridiculous if it happened to her again,” Keskin says, “Even though she doesn't grieve in a normal – well, not that there is a normal way – but in a stereotypical way, I thought it was like, now she has to at least address the fact that she's grieving after the second death because it's so unrealistic that that would happen again.

“I definitely found grieving is just – there’s no right or wrong way to grieve. I felt it was fun to get to explore what we didn’t do much of in series one, which is talking much about [grief].”

Across the six episodes, Chi starts counselling with the most unprofessional therapist, Ruth (Bridget Christie), who capitalises and thrives on her grief, believes Karen is reincarnated as a cordless hoover at a local Bingo, and grapples with the growing anxiety that someone else in her life will die too.

Alongside Christie, there’s a whole host of new roster of guest stars this season from Marc Wootton to Juliet Cowen and Sarah Kendall.

“I love working with new people and adding funny people that I love watching,” she says, “Bridget was one of them, just being so hilarious. It was lovely and an amazing, incredible, hysterical time working with her and getting to see what she does and even in real life. They're all so funny.”

Keskin admits it was a “treat to come back” and she was “so grateful” to return for a second season, especially as it was a chance to take the biggest lessons from last season and lean into what resonated with audiences.

“I think it's more just what I thought worked in series one, what didn't as much,” she says about this season’s scripts, “There were some green screen things we've changed focusing on tiny celebrities and TV stuff for the surreal bits.”

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Keskin’s signature-style sketches which she found fame with on YouTube – with parodies of the likes of Friends and Gemma Collins – are also woven into the show, including a meta version of Chi watching herself in the show she’s in on Gogglebox.

“I was eager to do Charli xcx,” she says, “That was definitely my favourite one, saving the day at the end, but all of them were so fun.”

Keskin was keen to include more of this style of surrealism as it seemed to translate with the style of comedy her audience had already grown to expect. She continues: “I think focusing on that more and trying to make it more what I did on more online, which was the TV parodies and things like that, which I think works better than just random cut offs of me on someone's balls.”

Working on the series has been the most she’s “ever learnt, more than school” as she moved from being a one-woman-production – scripting, filming, lighting, costumes and editing all of her own videos – to having a full team on set to collaborate with.

“You learn as you go, and it's so fun doing it,” Keskin says, “I've really enjoyed doing it with, obviously, on a larger scale because you get to not have to worry about doing everything from lighting to catering yourself.

“So, even though you have that lack of control a little bit, you get so much help and It's lovely working as a team and trusting people, learning to take other people's opinions and things like that. I love it.”

Though Chi shares her name, Keskin is playing an exaggerated version of an amalgamation of her childhood and teenage self, but admits there’s “probably more of [her] than [she’d] like to admit” in the character.

“It’s very much based on just how I felt and I suppose not really growing up,” she says, “It’s based on myself, but in a very wide, extravagant sense, because I feel like, luckily, I know how to cook something now and things like that.”

Writing and starring in two seasons has also changed how Keskin approaches her short-form content too, as she used to “make it up” as she went along, but now she’s much more structured (and efficient) about the process.

“It's so much easier now knowing how to plan, even just doing green screen videos and stuff, because I've had a team and I've worked with a director and make up and costume,” she continues. “It's a much easier ways of planning things and writing.”

Did she ever think writing sketches in her bedroom would lead to her own TV show? “I was always a bit delusional and had big dreams, but for them to actually happen is crazy and unbelievable,” Keskin replies. “But it's just such a dream come true to get to write your own show.”

In contrast to her character, Keskin is a self-starter having created her own path into the industry by writing and shooting her own sketches online, all of which demonstrated the breadth of her acting and comedic abilities.

“I think [doing social media] is showing what you can do, whereas it's really hard to do that I know traditionally,” she says, “obviously people had to do it with the stand-up route or go to drama school or finding an agent. So, I think it's just a way of showing, here's what I can do and it's an easy presentation.”

If the series does come back for a third outing, Keskin is conscious she doesn’t want to “overkill, quite literally” with the gag of someone dying in the first episode again. And we’re honestly not sure whether Chi could take much more.

“I'd love to do a series 3,” she continues, “There’s more to explore within the world, but also just looking to see what else I can come up with... I always want to make it unexpected, whether or not you do it.

"I don't want to overkill, quite literally, but also don't want to just be basic and boring. Who knows? Maybe it'll be Chi [who dies]."

Things You Should Have Done is now streaming on BBC iPlayer.

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