Back to Life, series 2, review: Daisy Haggard's return is an out-and-out triumph
Back to Life is an excellent TV show that’s been cursed with some rotten luck. The first, superb series of Daisy Haggard and Laura Solon’s comedy-drama about a woman returning to her seaside hometown after an 18-year prison sentence, was broadcast in 2019. It began the week after the conclusion of Fleabag. It could hardly help being drowned in the swell of adulation that followed that series, one that was very different in many ways but also happened to be about a complex female lead looking to move on from a difficult past. Back to Life was either condemned to being the new Fleabag or just not noticed in the hubbub.
None the less, a few months later Back to Life was recommissioned… and then the pandemic happened. So, like its protagonist, Miri Matteson (Haggard), Back to Life has been away for a long time. Wonderful, then, to be able to report that series two is an out-and-out triumph.
Ironically given the gap between series, this new run picks up just three weeks after we last saw Miri – making it just six weeks since she left prison. Things are looking up though, what with her probation officer, Janice (Jo Martin), having found her a job at the local supermarket and her relationship with Billy (Adeel Akhtar) going along nicely. Unfortunately, "things looking up" is no kind of dramatic story arc, and so things quickly start looking bleak.
The arrival of John Boback (Adrian Edmondson), the father of Lara, the girl Miri killed all those years ago, sends Back to Life straight back to the kind of dark places Miri is desperately trying to escape. It was Boback who was having an affair with Miri’s friend Mandy (Christine Bottomley) all those years ago. Mandy was 17 years old at the time, and lied to Lara that it was Miri who was having the affair. This led to the cliff-top argument that led to everything else.
So Boback’s return is big news, but it also gives Back to Life a new complexity, in the form of a thriller plot. Boback, who in Edmondson’s hands is genuinely creepy, circles Miri for what we assume will be revenge. It’s brilliantly handled: as well as being very funny throughout, this series is an exercise in pacing to match the best of Line of Duty.
A comedy-thriller that yokes together shocks and belly laughs, often in the same scene, would be one thing, but Back to Life series two is also extremely moving at times. A large part of this is Haggard’s performance, entirely convincing as a relentless optimist on whom mishaps and tragedies pile up like iron filings on a magnet. Another part of it is Haggard and Solon’s writing, which manages to ruminate gently on the meaning of forgiveness and freedom without ever being above a filthy joke.
But it’s also down to the ensemble – rarely has there been a show where every one of the supporting cast is so fully rendered. Akhtar as Miri’s neighbour and later boyfriend Billy is a study in kind-heartedness (and kindness is so much harder to write and play than anger). Miri’s parents, Oscar and Caroline, get a proper, thoughtful storyline about marriage in later life that Geraldine James and Richard Durden repay with career-best work. Meera Syal, playing Billy’s horrible mother; Jo Martin, as parole officer Janice; and Lizzy McInnerny, as Boback’s tortured wife, are all indelible characters in their own right.
Yet somehow Haggard manages to yoke this all together with a plot that hinges on a Tamagotchi called Jerry. It’s a high-wire act, yet it’s delivered with so much confidence and brio that you hardly notice. Series two improves on series one in every way. Put the two together and you have an instant, 12-episode classic.
