Barbara leaves sexist Blackpool for London in the early sixties, where she is soon discovered by a businessman who lands her a role in a sitcom. The team she works with sees her talent, but the announcer has doubts about this unknown name with a stupid accent. Her first episode is decisive: the audience falls in love with her. Now that she is becoming famous, she faces a number of problems, but what bothers Barbara the most is how men run over women.
Funny Woman is the film adaptation of the book Funny Girl by Nick Hornsby, a comedy-drama light novel. In the title, a girl has become a woman, because the lead role goes to Gemma Arterton, who is approaching forty. Of course, there's no rule that the word "girl" can no longer be used after a certain age, but this prevents silly jokes from being made on social media.
Stars: Gemma Arterton, Tom Bateman, Arsher Ali
However, the word "fun" is much more ironic here. Gemma Arterton is a good actress, but she is not funny. She doesn't have a smile anywhere, especially on her butt. The moments when she calmly cracks a joke don't elicit any laughter and when she frantically tries to be funny she elicits vicarious embarrassment.
Only when she's in the studio and the cameras are rolling everything does she fit in. In the black-and-white footage of an old British sitcom, her character shines through. The humor is in the style of the Carry On films: always silly and never not being funny. And as soon as that stops, she disappears again, like Cinderella losing her comic slipper after twelve hours. What Arterton does have is 'screen presence', but in a series with this title that is not enough.
That also somewhat conflicts with the purpose of the book and this film adaptation: her character is more than tired of being seen as a pretty (and therefore empty) face. However, she puts a lot of time and effort into Arterton's appearance; even the opening credits of her show photographs of her only. Funny Woman seems a little vain to her.
The atmosphere is incredibly nice. Footage from London is occasionally shown. Barbara uses the computer, so you can always see her blonde locks somewhere in the picture. The art department shows a keen eye for detail in the sets, which never undermines the credibility that this story took place sixty years ago. The cinematography is contemporary, but that doesn't bother; No zooming or panning required to give you a boost of nostalgia.
Emancipation is a fairly flexible theme throughout the series and only comes to the fore in the last episode in a less than subtle monologue. But actually the whole drama is handled very loosely and without too many problems. Barbara has a black friend who briefly fought against racism, one of the writers of her sitcom struggles with her sexuality, and Barbara still feels the consequences of her mother abandoning the family when she was young. Everything more filling than lighting.
In some ways that's wrong, because in some ways Funny Woman wants to be more than a screwball comedy movie about the '60s. The series has clearly been expensive and is trying to convey a message. But this is what you get when you use chick lit as your source material. Emancipation also goes overboard when it comes to romance.
On the other hand, the cheerful tone of Funny Woman makes it a compulsive series. The origins and development of the sitcom arouse curiosity to see how this story continues and the high level of jokes, even if they are not laugh-out-loud jokes, creates a pleasant atmosphere. With these six episodes, the book was filmed in its entirety, so despite an ending with a small opening, that's probably how it will be.
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