'Such Brave Girls' Get Braver & More Bizarre in Season 2

With dark humor, odious characters, and outlandish plots, Such Brave Girls is the kind of show that viewers either love or hate. To enjoy it requires a strong stomach for secondhand embarrassment and suicide jokes. Its risky debut in 2023 paid off, winning audience acclaim and the 2024 BAFTA for best-scripted comedy. Created by up-and-coming writer Kat Sadler and starring Sadler and her real-life sister Lizzie Davidson, Such Brave Girls has returned for a second season that is braver and more bizarre than ever.

Sadler and Davidson star as Josie and Billie, two sisters who yearn for attention but seek it in opposite ways. Josie, a manic-depressive lesbian, slumps through life like an emo teen, hoping her tragic demeanor will win her sympathy. Billie is a ray of faux sunshine with a plastered-on smile who throws herself at men to fix financial and self-esteem problems. If you’re wondering where these two get such winsome personalities, enter Deb (Louise Brealey), their single mother. Deb has a veneer of Billie’s can-do attitude, thinly concealing her own version of Josie’s depression and a heap of financial woes.

If you were expecting character growth or emotional catharsis after Season 1, be forewarned; that is not what this show is about. The season begins when Deb and Billie kidnap Josie from a lecture hall and force her to marry her boyfriend Seb (Freddie Meredith) (A lesbian with a boyfriend? Yep, long story, see Season 1.) They do all this, and far more throughout the season, to prove to Deb’s wealthy boyfriend Dev (Paul Bazely) that they are the types of women men marry. You almost root for the three women to make bad decisions that will upend their lives, like when Josie and Billie try to bribe a tween with cocaine after she sees Billie getting intimate with said tween’s dad.

With Deb as the machinating mother and luckless Josie and Billie as spinster sisters, the show resembles Jane Austen for the 21st century, though light on romance and heavy on mental illness. Throughout the season, Deb amasses a house of freeloaders, beginning with her adult daughters and adding Josie’s new husband, Deb’s on-again-off-again boyfriend, Billie’s scheming boyfriend Nicky (Sam Buchanan), and briefly, Nicky’s baby from another woman. It’s a delight to see cast from the first season pop up in unexpected ways, especially the bit part of Josie’s friend Claire (Amy Trigg), a mild-mannered bookstore employee who gets swept up into the family’s drama.

Every character’s idiosyncrasies and neuroses are turned up to eleven in this season, and it shows in their character design alone. Josie has raccoon-level rings of thick black eyeliner in most scenes, and Billie spends half the season running around in a cheap ball gown and pigtails, dressed up for her job as a party princess. 

The first season positioned Josie as slightly more of a protagonist than Billie and Deb, but this season puts them all on equal footing. In fact, at times, it feels more like Deb’s than Josie’s, with a majority of the episodes revolving around Deb’s attempts to ensnare Dev for his money. Saddler still gives herself plenty of material to work with. She gives an especially memorable performance when Josie is interviewed by an NHS therapist in Episode 2, and again in the following episode when she attempts to get herself readmitted to a psychiatric hospital.

Despite themes of mental illness, emotional abuse, and homophobia, Such Brave Girls is not a show with a sensitive or empowering message to impart. Saddler’s idea for the show came from her own experience with mental illness, which makes this season feel like a nod to those with similar experiences and a shared sense of humor about it, not a lesson to outsiders. 

Bingeable as the short and pithy episodes are, the themes are intense, and the characters can get (intentionally, brilliantly) irritating, which makes this show best watched in a few sittings. Depending on just how much you relate to Josie, Billie, and Deb, your mileage may vary.

All episodes of Such Brave Girls Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on Hulu and under the Hulu tile on Disney+.