After a decade as Louis C K 's sidekick – first as his co-star in the short-lived Lucky Louie sitcom, and later as the raspy-voiced Pam, his unrequited love interest in Louie – Pamela Adlon has finally hopped a ride to solo stardom with Better Things.
This new FX series, which she created and produces with CK, sees Adlon as Sam Fox, a single working actor trying to raise teenage daughters in Los Angeles. Already renewed for a second season, this jittery sitcom wanders the dark shadows between comedy and drama, in its debut on Tuesday on OSN First Comedy HD.
"It's about family ... and ugh, everything that comes with it," says Adlon, an award-winning television writer and a highly regarded voice actor for her Emmy-winning turn as Bobby on King of the Hill. As well, she spent seven seasons on Californication.
“It’s angsty, intense,” she adds. “Sam is kind of an exaggerated version of myself. I’m a single mum and I have three daughters – and I’m deeply, darkly middle-aged. I feel like everything is funny in my life, there’s a lot of funny in the darkness. I just feel like there’s really no category for this kind of thing. It’s not comedy or dramedy. It’s like the incredible feelings show.”
Adding to her character's grey hairs are her headstrong daughters Max (Mikey Madison), Frankie (Hannah Alligood) and Duke (Olivia Edward), and her mum Phil (the Olivier award-winning actress Celia Imrie, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), an English expat who just happens to live across the street.
Paddling hard against the current in this maelstrom of teen hormones and elderly eccentricity, "Sam's kind of discovering herself romantically", as she does her best to earn a living, sort out her daughters and squeeze in private time, whenever possible. For viewers, the 50-year-old Adlon is a crowd-pleaser – scoring 94 per cent on the Rotten Tomatoes website – while drawing rave reviews for her first 10-episode season, which recently concluded in the United States.
Carrie Battan, of The New Yorker, writes: "The show, though prickly in places, has wound up being – surprisingly, delightfully – the feel-good comedy of the year, and possibly the most poignant love letter to single motherhood that has ever aired on TV."
Building the premise for Better Things, however, did not prove an easy birth – even with a big push from her long-time pal and collaborator C K.
“When I was first coming up with ideas for the show, it was really hard for me,” she says. “I was blocked, and talking to Louie about it. I could come up with ideas for him all day long [as a writer for Louie], but when it came to me, I was stumped.”
“So I said: ‘You write something, and I write something, and at the end of the day, we’ll call each other. We’ll read it to each other’ ... So Louie wrote a scene of me being at the park and coming home from a soccer game and there’s a kid in the car who nobody knows. And I wrote a scene with a girls’ night out with all my lady friends ... and he’s like: ‘This is the voice of your show’.”
In contrasting her real-life personality with her on-screen persona, Adlon admits she lives a calmer life than Sam, and takes a much more level-headed tack in the parenting of her own teen daughters, Gideon, Odessa and Rockie.
“Even though I’m rough around the edges – and so is Sam – she’s a little naive when it comes to that kind of stuff. She’s a bit more of a loose cannon than I am; I don’t really get upset in the way that she does.”
• Better Things airs midnight (late-night) on Tuesday on OSN First Comedy HD. Check listings for viewing times
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