CATASTROPHE: A VERY FUNNY, BUT SOBERING DEPICTION OF THE TRUE COST OF TRUE LOVE

Catastrophe is a British Television Sitcom created, written by, and starring Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney, who portray single people who become a couple after Sharon (played by Horgan) unexpectedly becomes pregnant following a fling with Rob (played by Delaney) while he is visiting London on business. Carrie Fisher, Ashley Jensen and Mark Bonnar play supporting characters in the series.

The show ran from 2015-2019 on Channel 4 (in the UK), and got Sharon Horgan a BAFTA nomination for Sharon Horgan for Best Female Comedy Performance in 2016. Both Horgan and Delaney won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Writer in the Comedy genre. The show was also nominated for a Peabody Award, and it received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Writing For a Comedy Series (Horgan and Delaney).

The show currently has an impressive 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with an Audience Score of 92%. It also has a Metascore of 87 (based on only 47 critic reviews) on Metacritic, with a User Score of 8.5, and an 8.2/10 on IMDB (based on 21,000 reviews).

I can’t say enough about this show. I have to be honest, I have trouble with shows that are produced outside of America and Canada, mostly because I don’t get the culture (British humor isn’t always funny to Americans), and so sometimes it can be hard to really get into those shows, but this show overcomes traverses that hurdle fairly quickly and easily, and was such an easy watch from start to finish. It was extremely well-written and hilariously funny, and I think the shows super power is being written by the two stars of the show, so the dialogue and the jokes, especially for their individual characters are expertly written in the actors voice, making it easy for them to lean into who they already are as people as they portray their respective characters.

I also think the format of the show works extremely well. There are only six episodes per season (approximately 24 minutes each), so when the show was in production, it didn’t have a chance to get stale, in fact, it left you wanting more. And now that Catastrophe has had its full run, and you can continue the story without having to wait for a new season, it still feels like an easy binge, with only 24 episodes in all, with a total runtime of about 604 minutes total.

Catastrophe, though a comedy in every way, still manages to tackle some pretty heavy material while giving you permission to laugh your way through it, and in the end, is maybe the most realistic depiction of what real love actually is I’ve come across in quite some time. It’s also a show that feels like it flies under the mainstream radar, despite the remarkably high marks on the Tomatoes, Metacritic and IMDB, which is why I wanted to cover it here. It’s a show that’s unquestionably worth the watch, even if you have to come out of pocket the $14.99 for an Amazon Prime subscription in order to do it. It’s a show that’s definitely in my top 100, and is maybe in my top 20 sitcoms of all time.

You can watch Catastrophe on Amazon Prime Video (with a subscription). It’s also available by the episode (for $1.99 each) on Google Play Movies, YouTube and Apple TV.