Josh Gad and Isla Fisher in Wolf Like Me.Credit:Stan
Meet Gary (Josh Gad). He’s a 40-year-old single father,with a daughter on medication,who has never quite recovered from the death of his wife Lisa. Into his life slams Mary (Isla Fisher),an advice columnist whose day job is helping other people solve their problems. Which would be fine,if it was not obvious that her life is also a wreck.
At a time when a lot of storytelling feels mythologically dense,it’s unexpectedly refreshing to step into a new world with no expectations. (And this is from someone who stays up well after his bedtime towatchThe Book of Boba Fett every week.)
InWolf Like Me,writer-director Abe Forsythe has built a genre-bumping dodgem car,driving alongside romantic comedy and drama,but moving in and out of its lane when it chooses to. The result is a show that takes a moment to pin down,but feels wonderfully richer the deeper you go.
A more academic mind might call it a character piece,and that’s not far off the mark. Each episode unfurls layers of character,each one adjusting your perception ever so slightly. (Or,in the case of episode two,as though a 25-tonne truck has come flying through the front window and landed in your brain.)
In truth,while they seem different at first glance,Gary and Mary aren’t so far apart. They are two people who are completely broken inside,going through the motions of daily life,clinging to a veneer of normality – particularly Mary. The show’s big notes are big,but you get a sense of its real power in the smaller,more tender moments. In one scene,Gary encounters a couple with a newborn child and his pain comes to the surface.
There are echoes here of the most sophisticated emotional comedies. BBC Two’s wonderfulMarion and Geoff springs to mind,in which Rob Brydon played an estranged husband. Or Ricky Gervais’After Life,which does an uneasy but magnificently navigated dance around the subject of grief. But there is a lot more that we can’t discuss. To quoteDoctor Who’s River Song:“Spoilers,sweetie.”