TV review: This Way Up is a masterpiece

If you haven’t seen the first series yet, then what are you waiting for? This Way Up is very funny and has a breathtakingly beautiful and sad final scene

Aisling Bea’s masterpiece isn’t a bunch of singles, it’s an album. I’d recommend you watch all six episodes of the second series in one or two goes.

We've just finished watching the second series of This Way Up (Channel 4 and All 4 ) in our house. I’d sometimes review these after watching one episode of the new series, and that’s fine if they’re just episodic sit-coms where an issue arises at the start and is resolved by the end.

This Way Up isn’t that kind of show. Aisling Bea’s masterpiece isn’t a bunch of singles, it’s an album. I’d recommend you watch all six episodes of the second series in one or two goes. If you haven’t seen the first series yet, then what are you waiting for?

First of all, it’s very funny. But then that’s what you’d expect when you get a comedian like Bea to write a show that has her starring opposite Sharon Horgan, who plays her sister and was also involved in the production. It has an amazing cast, including Tobias Menzies ( The Crown), Indira Varma ( Game of Thrones) and Sorcha Cusack with a note-perfect performance as Mammy. There’s romance and sex and nice shots of London and if it all sounds a bit Sex and the City, then it isn’t.

This Way Up is a perfectly rounded show about sisters, life in the  big city , Irishness, sadness, and — in th e end — a bit of hope.

A fair bit of This Way Up is about loneliness. Aisling Bea’s character, Áine (the fada is used for an English-people-trying-to-pronounce-Irish-names gag) shares an apartment, but a lot of the time it feels as if she’s living alone. We get used to watching her by herself in the apartment or travelling solo across London for work.

We know from the opening scene of the first episode that she has spent time in a clinic after what she describes as a breakdown. It’s her sister Shona (Sharon Horgan) who picks her up from the clinic, and it’s Shona who does the bulk of the worrying about Áine, trying to metaphorically pick her up anytime she starts to approach a low.

But This Way Up weaves plenty of  proper laughs into the anxiety, whether it’s Áine riffing freestyle during a colonoscopy or Shona glowing with pride when the gynaecologist tells her she has the womb of a 39-year-old. The minor characters are allowed time to entertain us as well — the DJ at a fund-raiser for Jamaican immigrants is worth the entrance fee alone.

But just like Ricky Gervais in After Life, Aisling Bea is going for a lot more than giggles. This Way Up is a perfectly rounded show, about sisters, life in the  big city , Irishness, sadness, and — in th e end — a bit of hope. I won’t spoil it for you, but the closing scene of the final episode is breathtakingly beautiful and sad.

That said, I was glad when it ended because it can be hard to be around Aisling Bea’s Áine for more than six episodes at a time. You’d need a break from her manic banter. As long as it’s not too long — there are enough threads left hanging to suggest that season 3 is in the works. I’m looking forward to it.