I don’t think any­one will dis­agree with me that it’s been one hell of a year, and Christ­mas is des­cend­ing on us fast.  So it seemed com­pletely appro­pri­ate to be watch­ing a show about people who’ve had a hell of a year, too, drawn togeth­er at Christ­mas.

Annie and Will have grav­it­ated back to the home they grew up in, occu­pied by their young now-wid­owed step­moth­er, look­ing for sanc­tu­ary, famili­ar­ity, or maybe just some­where to stay after the wheels have fallen off their respect­ive lives.  Mean­while, Car­ol, their step­mum, is try­ing to fig­ure out life without her hus­band, and cre­ate some kind of nor­malcy, partly by lean­ing on Paul, who’s become a months-long house­guest.

As they awk­wardly nav­ig­ate new and old rela­tion­ships in the two days lead­ing up to Christ­mas, some pretty big truths emerge, and must be dealt with, and frankly, these aren’t the most emo­tion­ally cap­able people.

Except maybe Paul, who is wise in a kind of idi­ot sav­ant  way.  He’s some­how charm­ing, com­pletely clue­less, and drives Annie ini­tially, and Will more endur­ingly, nuts with his invas­ive ques­tions and tact­less obser­va­tions.   This is obvi­ously not helped by the fact that he appar­ently now lives in the home they see as theirs.

James Cain is an excel­lent Paul, gangly and noisy but gen­er­ous to a fault.  Cain also gen­er­ously gives focus to the oth­er act­ors; a del­ic­ate bal­ance to achieve when your char­ac­ter is the car­toony com­ic one.  Dryw McAr­thur is far too like musi­cians I have known (or whatever),  with self-doubt and self-fla­gel­la­tion under the bravado, nev­er feel­ing they’re good enough.   Kate John­stone­’s Annie is recog­nis­able, too, the girl who has blown her poten­tial and is try­ing to fig­ure out what that leaves her (just @me next time, ffs).  And Tabatha Pini-Hall as Car­ol is incred­ibly sweet and fra­gile, try­ing to be a step­mum and a teach­er, but also just being a girl in her 20s who’s griev­ing and does­n’t have the energy for any­one else.

It was more emo­tion­al than I expec­ted, and more funny, and I don’t know why as I’ve found pre­vi­ous shows Cas­sandra Tse has dir­ec­ted to be con­sist­ently both of those things.   She chooses stor­ies about people who are, not broken, or dis­en­fran­chised, but def­in­itely out of their depth.…  and she leads them back to stable ground with a deft touch and a wry appre­ci­ation of the absurd.

I very much enjoyed Homemade Takeaways.   It will be on for a fur­ther 8 nights after today, and I rather think it’s a bet­ter option to Hall­mark Christ­mas movies, if you’re look­ing for a little sea­son­al enter­tain­ment of an even­ing.  Book at Bats.  I’m really glad Whamaged­don has­n’t star­ted yet.  Rude, guys.