Such Brave Girls is a British sitcom about a dysfunctional single-parent family created by Kat Sadler for BBC Three. It stars Sadler, with Louise Brealey and Lizzie Davidson. It is directed by Simon Bird and produced by A24 with Various Artists Ltd. The first series ran from 22 November 2023. It was renewed for a second series in May 2024.
Sadler has described the series as being a “family sitcom about trauma”, but that it’s also about “being narcissistic losers who are pathetically obsessed with what people think about us.”[1]
The series was created and written by Kat Sadler, who also stars. It is directed by Simon Bird and was produced for Various Artists Ltd and A24 by Catherine Gosling Fuller, with Phil Clarke, Jack Bayles, Piers Wenger and Sadler as executive producers.[2] It was commissioned after a successful 2021 pilot episode.[3]
Sadler appears in the series alongside her real life sister Lizzie Davidson, and they play sisters on the show. Sadler told The Times that Davidson read the drafts and acted as her “sense check … telling me if I’ve gone too mad”. She described their characters of Josie and Billie as “not us, but they are certainly inspired by bits of us … we have taken some of the worst aspects of ourselves”. She said that their own mother had seen it “and laughed in all the right places”.[4]
Bird wrote to Sadler asking to direct the series after watching the 2021 pilot episode, with Sadler and Bird agreeing to keep the series as a comedy rather than veer towards comedy-drama.[5]
A second six-part series was commissioned in May 2024.[6]
The series started airing in the United Kingdom on BBC Three on 22 November 2023, with all episodes released on BBC iPlayer the same day.[9] It was available in the United States on Hulu from 15 December 2023.[10]
Lucy ManganinThe Guardian described the show as “properly brutal and properly funny”, saying that she found “particular joy in seeing a woman-led, female-written show that doesn’t pull its punches”. She added that it was “brave – singular, fresh, scabrous and unflinching – but still – or, rather, as a result – hilarious.”[11] Steve Bennett for Chortle gave the show four stars commenting that “elements of pure sitcom” combine with an “earthy, nuanced realism of the dysfunctional characters” with Sadler’s “unique comic sensibilities” combining with an “admirable reluctance to take serious issues seriously” which “makes for an impressively different series.”[12]
