Netflix finally adds dark British comedy starring Martin Freeman with 92% score on Rotten Tomatoes

 

Adding to their existing ranks of great British comedies, Netflix have added yet another in the form of a show with a 92 percent Rotten Tomatoes score.

Starring Martin Freeman, it joins Brassic, The IT Crowd, Fresh Meat, and Lovesick in Netflix’s ever growing catalogue of brilliant British comedy shows.

The show ran for four seasons over three years, with Freeman being joined by Daisy Haggard, Joanna Bacon, and Alun Armstrong. Here’s the trailer:

Breeders trailer

Credit: Sky Comedy

0 seconds of 2 minutes, 22 secondsVolume 90%

 

The show, called Breeders, has finally made its way to Netflix, with the first three seasons of four having been added.

The show comedically follows young parents struggling with looking after their kids, and all the inherent humour that comes from this.

Freeman not only stars in it, but also is a co-creator and writer, with it being based on his original idea.

The 92 percent RT score is joined by an impressive average rating of 7.6 on IMDb.

Add to that an audience score of 89 percent (as much as Rotten Tomatoes try, I refuse to call it the ‘Popcornmeter’), and you can see the show is a must-watch for comedy fans.

Carol Midgley, reviewing the show for the Times, said: “Simon Blackwell and Chris Addison have managed the near-impossible by creating a parenting comedy that is not twee and makes the tired tropes of sleep deprivation and school-catchment obsession actually funny.”

Allison Shoemaker, reviewing the film for RogerEbert.com, said: “When writers Addison and Blackwell let Breeders wander away from its thesis, and especially when they allow Freeman and Haggard to play messy and complicated, it shows tremendous promise.”

One of the show’s co-creators, Simon Blackwell, said of the show’s themes around the difficulties and pressures of parenthood: “There’s a lot of pressure to be perfect. But just like all political careers end in failure, all parental careers end in failure. You’re given this human being and instructed to launch it into the world.

“There’s a theoretically perfect way of doing that, but it’s only theoretical. It’s actually about mitigating your screw-ups and trying to fail in the best way. Nobody ever gets to 18 and thinks: ‘That was a brilliant childhood'.

“No parent believes they haven’t made a single mistake. This show is taking away some of the guilt of that failure.

“It’s saying: you’re in a massive worldwide family of failures. No one’s going to get it right.”