I Hate Suzie Too review — Billie Piper’s fallen woman falls further

When we last met teen pop-star-turned-actor Suzie Pickles, protagonist of the 2020 tragicomedy I Hate Suzie, an explicit video had surfaced online showing her in flagrante with the director of her new sci-fi TV show. We watched through our fingers as she tried, and spectacularly failed, to contain the damage to her marriage and public profile.

In the follow-up series, I Hate Suzie Too, Pickles (played by Billie Piper) is trying to revive her ailing career on a Strictly-esque reality show called Dance Crazee. Suzie believes she has done her penance — she and her husband, Cob, are now separated; he has kept their house, while she is living in a hotel — though others seem to disagree. The series opens with her performing a dance piece in horror-clown garb that is clearly unsuited to primetime television. When viewers are asked to vote on her performance, a flurry of thumbs-down emojis float across the screen.

As a mortified Suzie makes the long walk back to her dressing room, her team once again go into damage-limitation mode, her publicist wondering if it is time for an apology. “What am I apologising for?” asks Suzie. “Nothing specific,” he replies. “Just generally, in the world, we don’t always behave in the way that we would like.”

Co-written by Piper and Succession scribe and playwright Lucy Prebble, I Hate Suzie Too is brutal in its portrait of the archetypal fallen woman seeking public forgiveness and rehabilitation. The dark humour that underpinned its predecessor is now treacle-black: in the opening episode we see Suzie taking pills to terminate a pregnancy. Fretting that they haven’t worked, she consults an online bot that asks her whether she has passed any clots the size of a lemon, or, if not, a plum. “Why fruits?” Suzie types back, quizzically.

Piper has said the series is not autobiographical, though the parallels between her life and that of the twice-divorced ex-pop-singer Suzie are hard to ignore. Most pointed is its jaundiced view of fame and the unattainable and ultimately destructive standards to which women in the spotlight are held. It’s not enough that Suzie has lost her home, her family and a lucrative contract with Disney; she must radiate remorse while remaining upbeat and unthreatening at all times. “I’m not a bad mother, I’m not a bad dancer, I’m not a bad person,” she wails to her manager who suggests that, to boost her image, she should dye her black hair a more feminine, fanciable blonde.

Piper plays Suzie as exasperatingly impulsive, self-pitying and narcissistic, but with just enough humanity to make us root for her. The camera is forever up in her face, closing in on the gritted teeth, the rictus smiles and the rising panic behind the eyes, aptly mirroring the claustrophobia of a life lived in the public eye. Suzie’s continued unravelling often makes for agonising viewing but, through sharp writing and an electrifying central performance, Piper and Prebble make it impossible to look away.

★★★★☆

 On Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK from December 20

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