Film Club S01E01 (2025) Aimee Lou Wood

Comedy | Drama | UK | 6-Parts x 30min each. Cast: Aimee Lou Wood, Suranne Jones, Nabhaan Rizwan, Adam Long, Liv Hill, Ralph Davis, Owen Cooper Aimee Lou Wood and Nabhaan Rizwan are impeccably cast in this intelligent comedy/drama about two film buff friends with unspoken feelings. It’s quietly confident TV that brims with insight. Evie (Aimee Lou Wood) and Noa (Nabhaan Rizwan) have been best friends since university, where they started a weekly film club that has endured ever since. The pair and a few good friends dress up in suitable costumes every Friday night and enjoying their time together. Now, however, they do so in Evie’s mum’s garage because Evie hasn’t been able to leave the house since her “wobble” at work six months ago, the exact nature of which is gradually revealed over the six-episode run. Evie set-dresses the garage appropriately for the film every week. It is a cocoon, a refuge and potentially a dependency. Then Noa is offered a job in Bristol and must take it. For the first time their friendship will be tested by distance, and the consequences of Evie’s agoraphobia made yet more oppressive. Around the central relationship, which does much to restore the lost art of yearning to its rightful place, are a variety of noisier ones offered by Evie’s family. There is her mother, Suz (Suranne Jones), who is a wonderful creation. Fiercely loving, endlessly energetic and high-maintenance, you can see the fear for her daughter electrifying every nerve beneath the impeccably groomed surface. If she stops moving, she’ll collapse. Evie’s sister Izzie (Liv Hill), has a darker outlook and drier wit. Film Club slots in to the growing subcategory of comedy about mental health, particularly women’s, written (or co-written) by women. It has a deep intelligence and psychological acuity underlying and informing all the jokes, and like them it also makes a point of looking beyond the suffering caused by mental illness to an individual and out at all the ways in which it can change dynamics and, especially without help, frustrate lives. Film Club is a quiet, careful but confident thing. A bit more torque and a bit less whimsy might be welcome, but that is to quibble.