Small Town, Big Story review – Christina Hendricks is terrifying in Chris O'Dowd's wacky Irish comedy
How much you enjoy Small Town, Big Story will depend on how you feel first about whimsy and second about genre mashups. If your appetite for both is large, then Chris O'Dowd's creation (he wrote and directed) has plenty to make you happy. If not, you might find the whole thing a little too underpowered to keep you going.
Christina Hendricks, of Mad Men fame, plays hard-bitten TV producer Wendy Patterson. She is in charge of her first big Hollywood production and returns to her tiny home town of Drumbán in Northern Ireland (after 25 years in Los Angeles surrounded by fat-cat bosses and patronising colleagues) to shoot it there. This follows shenanigans by Drumbán's more colourful and eccentric characters to keep the location scouts from choosing a more tax-advantageous site across the border; these shenanigans include a pig's head on a stick and a sign saying 'Death to the infidels', which, you know … well, OK, all right. Not even so much from an offence-giving point of view but from an 'Is this remotely credible in this particular world?' position.
Trying to keep the gang of misfits in order is, for some reason, the town GP, Séamus Proctor (Paddy Considine), a happily married man – unless he finds out about the affair his wife, Catherine (Eileen Walsh), is having with a fellow teacher – and leading a life of contentment until Wendy reappears. It is clear by the end of the first episode that they have history and by the end of the second episode, not exactly the history you might assume. Though there is a bit of that kind of history, too. ('I went for your tit,' Séamus recalls of their pivotal night in the woods on the eve of the millennium, 'and that move proved contentious.')
There are lots of things jostling for the viewer's attention. An elderly patient who keeps warning the good doctor 'They're coming for you.' A fellow producer, Brad (Tim Heidecker), back in LA trying to undermine Wendy from afar. The mandatory comic scenes as local residents try out for parts as extras. The location scout Jules (Patrick Martins) falling for world-weary barmaid Shelly (Evanne Kilgallon) – though Jules himself is such an abject simpleton as to be wholly unemployable in the real world, and the necessary suspension of disbelief in the whole takes another knock. There is the terrible young football team whose unremitting badness Séamus (the coach) puts down to them all having been born the year the reservoir was poisoned by sheep carcasses.
A gentle air of amusement pervades the episodes, with some nice touches strewn about (from the TV boss with an immunocompromised dog to Catherine's speech to her class about the difference between myth and legend). A certain charm begins to exert itself as a plot begins to cohere, too.
Wendy and the crew become increasingly enmeshed with Drumbán life – especially once Wendy is forced to cast gym owner and would-be entrepreneur Jimmy (Sam C Wilson) in the starring role when her A-lister drops out. Jimmy is desperate to pay off his IVF bills and court cases of an unspecified nature after the failure of Big Jim's Jim-Jams ('Covid dampened people's spirits for two-person pyjamas') and is overjoyed by the prospect of fame and fortune. Brad does CrossFit with Armie Hammer's orthodontist and offers to see if he can get the blacklisted star on the comeback trail, but Wendy declines.
The meat of the story, though, is in the relationship between Wendy and Séamus and his betrayal of her after the events in the woods, the ramifications of which forced her out of town. The comedy drama takes on better shape and heft around the question of how much we need to be believed and how cruel the world – and parents – can be if we are not. Now Séamus has a chance to right that wrong but at huge cost to himself. Does he owe it to his erstwhile girlfriend? Must we always tell the truth, no matter how absurd it sounds and when it can do us no good whatsoever? What if it's Christina Hendricks standing in front of you, alternately ice and fire, and equally terrifying in either mode? I don't think anyone would envy Séamus his choice.
Small Town, Big Story airs on Sky Max and is available on Now
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