My Sexual Abuse: The Sitcom
TV review 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
The title is a statement of intent. Comedian and writer Mark O’Sullivan sets himself the challenge of exploring his own childhood abuse at the hands of a family friend through the medium of comedy.
A couple of people messaged me when the show was announced, expressing surprise at the subject matter, particularly in the wake of Baby Reindeer and its attendant controversy. But the use of humour (and a total lack of detail about the real abuser) makes this show a very different prospect. It’s a different way to explore a very difficult subject and I think, using comedy, serves that subject unexpectedly well.
It’s very much Mark’s medium, having written and starred in the hit Channel 4 show Lee & Dean and written the ITVX series Tell Me Everything.
This documentary follows him as he films a single episode of a studio sitcom about the abuse he suffered as an 11 or 12-year-old. And the way he chooses to depict those horrors had me genuinely barking. Even knowing someone has the safest of hands when it comes to comedy, doesn’t guarantee he can be funny about something so horribly traumatic that actually happened to him.
We join him in the rehearsal room where he reveals that the paedophile will be represented by a man in a bear costume. Not a Grizzly or something horrific. One of those plushy bears who greets you at a theme park, waving and offering to pose for photos with your children.
It immediately sets a tone that unclenches the audience, at least a bit. The fear of tuning in, even to something called a “sitcom”, knowing what it will discuss, is real. How can this be funny? I won’t laugh because I’ll be too tense. Just some of the thoughts he needed to overcome.
But the moment he is told to point out his abuser in court (Mark plays himself in the sitcom) and it cuts to the bear in the dock, all bets are off. I haven’t watched the rest of the sitcom yet but I’m going to, on Channel 4’s streaming service, as soon as I’ve typed this.
He signs up comedy stalwarts Rufus Jones, Ellie Taylor and Cariad Lloyd as his sitcom family, again offering the safety of familiar comic performers, letting us know this is all going to be OK.
It’s unique in that it’s a programme that seems to be continually reassuring us that this isn’t going to be ungoverned or overly-exposing for its subject. Choosing to make it with Swan Films was an undeniably good move.
You’ll know their work from the many Grayson Perry documentaries they’ve made and how a lightness of touch and space to breath around the subject material are two of their trademarks.
I loved the way they present Mark to the viewers. He’s at work but he’s also working this out as he goes along. It’s clear he’s had a lot of therapy and processing time when it comes to what happened to him, but there’s a sense of emotional improvisation when it comes to handing this information over to the public. It feels generous, lacking the artifice of television. Watching, all you feel is the overwhelming need to protect young Mark and to hear and witness older Mark.
He’s not overly demonstrative. The camera doesn’t hover, waiting to harvest his tears or distress. The emotional peaks and troughs we’ve come to expect from emotive documentaries are replaced here with a different tone: one in which the audience seems encouraged to feel there is room to respond in whatever way feels right.
I remember doing a podcast with Mark a few years ago and within the first half hour of our chat, it came up in conversation. “I was abused when I was younger”. And I’ll admit, it took me by surprise. I wanted to say something, the right thing, but there isn’t anything. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. That’s shit,” was about it. But I liked that it was something he could say openly because it implies any shame about it does not belong to him.
That he wants to talk about it on television in this way, is truly admirable and I’m sure, for him, part of taking something back. Control of the narrative or his own future.
One of the things an abuser hands you when they choose to target you is a parcel of shame. It weighs heavy and slows you down, often stopping you speaking up about what they did. You carry it for the rest of your life in one form or another.
Whether or not My Sexual Abuse: The Sitcom has eased that burden for Mark, and I suspect it might have, it is bound to help other people. Some of them crushed under the weight of a shame that doesn’t belong to them, might see it and feel like they’re not alone.
Abuse happens in the dark and the way Mark and Swan Films and Channel 4 have brought it into the light (figuratively and literally) is to be wildly applauded.
Brilliant piece Julia, thanks - will definitely watch it now x