Muristek
Disney+’s superior coming-of-age show about a recovering addict’s hard-won emotional maturity is direct, straightforward, even earnest – but still full of comic drama
Most likely you won’t much warm to Samantha Fink (Sofia Black-D’Elia) when you first meet. She’s the titular single drunk female of this new show (Disney+), and the opening scene sees her stroll into work, late and inebriated, assault her terrified boss with a phone receiver, and then blame it all on “the patriarchy”. Alternatively, if you read that sentence and think “Wow, Sam sounds like a total ledge!”, Single Drunk Female may be the intervention you didn’t know you needed. Over the course of 10 half-hour episodes, Sam doesn’t just get sober, she stays that way.
The story is closely based on the life of the show’s 35-year-old creator, Simone Finch, who was still drinking when she started work on the script in about 2012. It was only as she acknowledged her alcoholism that her alter ego Sam was able to evolve beyond the hot mess of post-Fleabag TV cliche. Subsequent drafts were read by Finch’s co-writers on the briefly revived Roseanne, and eventually attracted the interest of Girls co-showrunner Jenni Konner, plus Daisy Gardner (30 Rock, Californication) and Leslye Headland (Russian Doll), who together formed an executive-producing team.
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