Hang Ups, episode 1 review: real therapists will roll their eyes but this comedy is a wonderfully ribald treat
A decade ago, not so long after her stint as the daffy Phoebe in Friends came to an end, Lisa Kudrow produced and starred in a comedy called Web Therapy. It featured a therapist proffering short-sharp sessions online. It lured stars as mega as Meryl Streep until, after four seasons, it was cancelled in 2015. But it has now been franchised out to the UK in the shape of Hang Ups (Channel 4) starring Stephen Mangan as Richard Pitt, whose name appears to be no accident.
As with other funny screen shrinks, Richard’s own life could do with a bit of emotional decluttering: he has two stroppy teenagers to deal with plus their posse of hangers-on, and an ogre for a father (Charles Dance), while midlife sex with his tolerant partner (Katherine Parkinson) is a grim mechanical farrago.
As we saw in the opening episode, day one of his new home-based business venture didn’t go any better: his own intensely serious shrink (Richard E Grant) counselled cupping his testicles as a method of self-soothing, his website designer (Karl Theobald, who was so delightful opposite Mangan in Green Wing) was a needy wreck, while a shady creditor called Neil (Steve Oram) was graphically threatening violence until he accepted the offer of therapy in kind.
And then there were the clients. Sarah Hadland (best known for her role as best friend Stevie in Miranda) as the pick of this opener, a highly strung lady-who-lunches whose loathing for her husband’s cats somehow linked back to a traumatic shower-room incident she had endured in puberty. The writing and the performing were the stuff of high-precision gelignite.
Mangan is never better than when teetering optimistically on the edge of chaos, and if he seems particularly at home here, that’s because he co-wrote the script with his brother-in-law Robert Delamere, who directs at breakneck pace, with fast and furious edits and much inventive use of the videocall cam.
The experience of watching it is many country miles away from the slowburn rhythms of actual psychotherapy. I should imagine that practitioners (such as the one with whom I cohabit) will roll eyeballs at its flagrant liberty-taking. But taken with a pinch of salt, Hang Ups is a ribald skewering of the talking cure that’s almost too much of a tasty treat.
