Diane Morgan’s latest sitcom Ann Droid has been a huge hit for the BBC, thanks to its tender humour and spritely outlook on old age. More than four million of us watched the first episode and I greedily hoovered up the rest. But despite how much I love Morgan’s robot Linda, I’m desperately hoping that the writer will pull the plug on Ann Droid – not to put it out of its misery, but rather to preserve its perfection.
As anyone who watches television with any sort of regularity will attest, sitcoms are the hardest genre to get right. So many of them are clunky, or else too thinly spread, while some even dare commit the very worst crime available to comedy: not being funny at all (looking at you Ricky Gervais’s Alley Cats). But Ann Droid has proved a jewel in this particularly murky Nile.
The series is set in the very near future, where the ongoing loneliness and social isolation epidemic among elderly people is being increasingly dealt with by robots. What better option for the harried sandwich generation than to offload ageing and ailing parents onto AI-in-human-form, thereby freeing them up to focus on the carnage of their own advancing years?
Sue (Sue Johnston) has been a widow for two years, and has recently had a fall. Her hapless middle-aged son Michael (Paul Ready) is far too busy losing his job and questioning his sperm count to give her the attention she requires, and so he buys her an out-of-date, second-hand android device named Linda (Diane Morgan).
When she is charged overnight and supported by a strong Wi-Fi connection, Linda can ably help Sue around the house, cooking for her, playing board games with her, even driving her to the shops. Sue is initially reluctant, but soon enough manages to find common ground with her new “friend”. As the series progresses, a connection of great tenderness develops.
Diane Morgan plays a robot, Linda, bought to care for Sue Johnston’s Sue (Photo: Gary Moyes/BBC/Boffola Pictures)Ann Droid does not put a foot wrong, and its six episodes are so beautifully weighted and impeccably judged. Johnston is utterly radiant, while Ready – as he ably proved on Motherland – has a hangdog face that was made for a mid-life crisis.
And then there is Diane Morgan. The comedian and writer is consistently phenomenal as Philomena Cunk, but I found her largely unwatchable in her previous sitcom, Mandy. Yet, here she offers an understated acting masterclass as the deadpan and unemotional robot that nevertheless manages to conjure, beneath its blank stare, an intimation of life-changing empathy. Do take note, Bafta.
It’s been a ratings hit too, making it one of the broadcaster’s most successful comedy launches in recent years, bigger than both this year’s series of Amandaland and Small Prophets. Its worthy success means that a second series is surely inevitable, because TV bosses want – understandably – to commission probable hits, rather than take a punt on something new. But, wait! Ann Droid was new! It’s newness, in fact, was part of its appeal. And besides, isn’t the whole concept of “new” the very lifeblood of good TV? If we want routine, or crave familiarity, we head to the soaps.
But a second series won’t seem quite as fresh, nor as inventive. And it won’t have the same narrative thrust, for the simple reason that it has already told its boldly existential story – how do we live in the modern age when life becomes compromised? – with such rare eloquence. What more needs to be said?
Wouldn’t it be thrilling if, instead, it simply ended here, with a mic drop, immediately preserved as quiet classic? This would allow Morgan and her co-writer Sarah Kendall – both clearly mercurial talents – to go away and come up with something else. Because that’s the great thing about true creatives. They create. They conjure more magic.
Ann Droid is among the very best things on TV this year, the most affecting, and surely the funniest. Please don’t sully it, BBC, with more of the same.
‘Ann Droid’ is available to stream now on BBC iPlayer
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