With the loss of ‘Derry Girls’ it could seem that we were going to be orphaned by a British youth comedy with its hooligan touch. What I really did not expect is to find something so soon to fill (with distance) that gap. I’m talking about ‘extraordinary‘, a Disney+ series that, of course, has a firm candidacy to be among the essentials of this 2023.
Created by a rookie Emma Moran With the support of the producer of ‘Killing Eve’ (Sid Gentle), we find the story of Jen (Máiréad Tyers), a young woman who, at the age of twenty-five, hasn’t developed powers yet in a world where everyone gets them when they turn 18.
Extraordinary using tropes
It is not the first time that we see the main ingredients of this series on the screen. We’ve seen the turn of roommates with superhuman abilities into comedy quite a few times: from the vampires in ‘What We Do in the Shadows’ to the creatures in ‘Being Human’. On the other hand, the “everyone is X except me” seems to have been exploited over and over again.
However, Emma Moran’s script manages to weather the common grounds by preventing the mix of its elements from going off the rails, something that could be quite easy. The result is as charming as it is consistently funny. What’s more, the misadventures of these roommates manage to produce several laughs per episode.
It does this with tremendously comedians with foul humor, somewhat foul-mouthed, hooligan but with quite good taste, not to say tino, when executing the gags. Although it is true that he can sometimes fall into something easy, Moran is tremendously inventiveness when it comes to resolving situations and advancing in the story.
And, really, with secondary characters like one whose rectum is a 3D printer and another who causes orgasms just by touching you, ‘Extraordinary’ could have gone too easily to the obvious and the easy joke. It’s not that they don’t “take advantage” in that sense, but they avoid staying in the tacky more than necessary.
SuperJen
On the surface (and on paper) ‘Extraordinary’ revolves around Jen’s attempts to be like everyone else. While we are peeling back layers, we discover the story of a girl with a difficult personality and somewhat narcissistic who is willing to use her friends and deceive her relatives to feel good.
To play with the title, ‘Extraordinary’ is extraordinary. A great and brilliant comedy that works like a charm with its cast of faces that are somewhat unknown to the general public. A strong candidate to occupy a position among the best series of 2023.