The best comedy of the decade finally returns to BBC tonight-Adam Miller-Entertainment – Metro

Alma’s Not Normal returns tonight – finally (Picture: BBC/Expectation TV)

‘You can’t just write about yourself, it has to feel like it’s about something bigger than you,’ Sophie Willian told an audience at the screening of Alma’s Not Normal series two.

Moments after calling press ‘c**ts’. I think she was joking?

But that one sentence really captures what makes Sophie one of the most exciting talents the BBC has produced over the last decade at a time when pushing new talent and voices is becoming increasingly rare.

Alma’s Not Normal is the rare gem of a comedy that truly deserved ‘the next Fleabag’ accolade. Personally, I think it’s much better.

Semi-autobiographical, created, written, and starring Sophie, Alma is a chain-smoking, Boltonian free-spirit and aspiring actress, raised partly by her nan but mainly in care because her mum is a drug addict with severe mental health problems.

While that should be the foundation for a modern-day tragedy about the dire state of the care system in the UK, it’s the premise of one of the funniest and smartest shows in recent memory.

The first series won Sophie a Bafta and if ever you come across anyone else who’s seen it, which in my experience isn’t often enough, they’ll share the same unbridled enthusiasm.

It’s been four years since Alma became an immediate gay icon looking like Bagpussin her pink and white coat, fag in hand, calling everything ‘fabulous’ with particularly camp articulation.

After an agonising wait, she’s finally back for another six episodes which Sophie recently confirmed will be the last – unless there’s a Christmas special, which given its rapturous reception seems likely.

When we left Sophie, she was turning her back on sex work after landing a proper acting job touring the UK for six months, destined for stardom, Bolton a distant memory.

Series 2 kicks off with Alma back from her nationwide tour to find she’s still her career is still at square one. She isn’t heading to the Hollywood hills after all and instead is jobless again in Bolton.

On the bright side, she’s got a new set of wheels and finds an agent… who works in the backroom of a chippy, feeding on the scraps.

Sophie Willan is the most exciting UK talent we have (Picture: BBC/Expectation TV/Neil Sherwood)

Alma might still be broke and as close to reaching her dreams as she was six months ago, but there’s been a big shift for the women around her.

Leanne (Jayde Adams) on the other hand has had a stroke of luck and has transformed a truck into a lucrative money-making bar.  

Lin is back at hospital and has turned to witchcraft which speaks for itself and Joan has a new pet keeping her busy in Jim (Nicholas Asbury).

There has been nothing as bold or smart in comedy since Alma’s Not Normal and its return only proves Sophie Willan is by far the most exciting talent the UK has produced for an unnervingly long time.

Punchy British comedy that will be talked about in years to come has been sparse. This Country stands out as the only other truly great comedy worth returning to time and time again.

Drama is where the money is at; it’s where channels feel they’ll get the biggest payoff but Alma’s Not Normal shows comedy and drama go hand in hand.

Just fabulous (Picture: BBC/Expectation TV/Ben Blackall)

It can be as devastating as it is comical – no more so than in one crushing moment in episode one. I laughed through the pain which is so often true to life but hardly ever felt on screen.

Alma’s Not Normal should have been the start of a new movement in comedy. Actually, it should have been the start of several movements in comedy.

It’s refreshingly working-class and northern with glimmers of Caroline Aherne’s level of genius, still so rare even with the long-lasting success of The Royle Family. It’s led by four equally brash women, each one camp and ferocious enough to be immortalised by drag queens up and down the UK. It’s a dysfunctional girl power anthem of television about four women, unapologetically standing their ground, for better or worse.

Taking a four-year break between your first-ever series and the next is brave in itself. Will anyone still care about Alma?

Thankfully for Sophie, Alma’s Not Normal hasn’t been bettered since. Nothing’s even come close.

If anything, it just feels all the more satisfying to be starved of Sophie’s talent for so long to find it’s come back richer, more urgent, and more timely given the long overdue calls for more working-class voices in television.

It doesn’t take guts to invest in working-class voices, it just makes sense – Sophie Willian is the proof.

Alma’s Not Normal returns tonight at 10pm on BBC One.

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