TV review: Sweetpea made me feel sorry for the bullies

Ella Purnell stars as Rhiannon in Sweetpea

There comes a point when you give up trying to talk like the kids. My break with Gen Z lingo came with the phrase ‘I feel seen’. 

They’re the words du jour when an artist or work of art appears to be talking to directly to you. They have a taint of self-pity in there too, which is very 2024.

Sweetpea (Sky Atlantic and NOW) is about a young woman, Rhiannon, who isn’t seen. 

Bullied at school, her mother left when she was young, lovers ghost her online and nobody in her job at the local newspaper talks to her. 

She fantasises about killing all of them, in a day dreamy way. Then her father dies, her sister decides to sell their family home and she stabs a guy having a pee against a wall 14 times. It’s that random.

I was reminded of the movie Carrie. Stephen King wrote the book, so there is light and shade. Some of the good characters do bad things, and vice versa. 

When Carrie eventually breaks and sets about killing all her classmates, it makes gruesome sense. You believe this girl is capable of it.

Rhiannon never seems capable of it in Sweetpea. This is because the tone is all wrong. Carrie had a small-town America horror feel about it from the start. 

Sweetpea is in a nondescript English town and it’s honestly like watching Coronation Street with better sets. Worse again, they try to make it feel like a dead-pan comedy. 

So every morning he arrives into the office, Rhiannon’s boss throws his coat over her. I couldn’t see any reason for this. It’s a running gag that isn’t funny.

The plot is a bit daft too. A receptionist at the newspaper, Rhiannon ends up investigating the murder because she knows more than anyone else about it. That’s because she did it, says no one, because like I said, the plot is spurious.

The acting is good in parts. Just not in the lead part. I’m not convinced by Ella Purnell as Rhiannon, she lacks the ferocity. 

The best characters are her bitchy sister and the girl who bullied her in school (and is now the estate agent selling her father’s house out from underneath her — make it stop!).

The upshot is that I feel sorry for the bullies. There is no attempt to explain why they are so horrible to Rhiannon, other than the fact that they’re pure bad and she’s a bit passive.

Real life doesn’t work like this. Maybe Sweetpea has a plot twist later on in the season, but I won’t be around to watch it. It just didn’t make me feel seen.