This Way Up review: Serious moments slide in from nowhere in triumphant second season

Aisling Bea and Sharon Horgan’s chemistry is as glorious as ever
This Way Up review: Serious moments slide in from nowhere in triumphant second season

Aisling Bea's Aine is a real and credible character

We first met Aisling Bea’s Aine two years ago, as she was being signed out of the rehab facility where she had been staying after “a teeny little nervous breakdown” – later revealed to have included a suicide attempt. 

We watched, alternately heart-in-mouth or laughing convulsively, as a job teaching English to foreign language students (“Get those worksheets in by Monday or I will Brexit the lot of you”), a fledgling relationship with Richard (Tobias Menzies) – the emotionally repressed father of Etienne, a private student who had recently lost his mother – and the brutal, unconditional love of her sister Shona (Sharon Horgan) helped to put her back together and find a comfortable enough place in the world again.

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