I have only seen 4 episodes thus far but have been impressed up to this point. I remembered the main character's face when I saw it on a poster, but I couldn't recall from where. Then it was pointed out to me that Ella Purnell, who plays the role of "Sweetpea" or Rhiannon was one of the main characters in the first season of Fallout. I was kind of surprised to hear that because a lot of actors and actresses struggle to differentiate between two very different characters but in this, Ella really pulls it off because there are zero similarities between the two characters.
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This rather dark series is about Rhiannon, who has had a string of bad luck in her life with most everything going wrong for her and she attributes this to having been bullied ruthlessly in high school. The bullying turned her into a rather meek person who everyone just ignores aside from her father and dog. Even her own sister basically ignores her. She is constantly getting run into by other people and she apologizes even though it wasn't her fault. She is a pushover and doesn't stand up for herself even though her father encourages her to do so.
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She is massively unhappy but just continues through the humdrum of life and caring for her little dog. But then one day something really bad happens (not gonna spoil) and it triggers a bit of a monster that has been inside of her all along, it was just suppressed with all the elements of her life.
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What emerges on the other side of this event is not really the same person at all. However, she is the only one that knows about the change and is really good at concealing it and this leads her to finally stand up for herself in her life and then all of the things in her life start to turn around for the better, but in the meantime she has some dark secrets and has to be very careful or things could turn bad for her again.
It's actually kind of difficult to write about this without revealing anything about it, but if you just watch the first episode you will be very up to speed about what it is that I am referring to. By the way earlier when i was talking about a "monster" I don't mean an actual monster, just the monster personality that was waiting to explode inside of Rhiannon all these years. A real monster would be super-stupid.
This show is part cop drama / part late coming-of-age / part feel-good-for-the-wrong-reasons sort of show. This mix doesn't really sound like it would work when you read that, but thanks to some excellent directing work and the fact that they have a perfect mix of tell, don't show as well as show, don't tell, makes it all move along quite quickly. In 4 episodes there hasn't been a single moment where I felt like they were wasting time in order to get to a certain amount of minutes so they could fill up a season with a certain number of episodes.
Should I watch it?
There is an ocean of bad series out there at any given point in time and this period of time is no exception. More often than not series end up wasting our time and carrying on just for the sake of carrying on. While 4 episodes in isn't exactly enough to convince this jury that it is one hell of a ride, the ride thus far has been exemplary and therefore I recommend that you seek this one out and give it a try.
Sweetpea can currently be streamed on YouTubeTV, Roku, or Starz. It also broadcasts on regular Sky TV, but I don't know a great deal about how that works