Frayed Review: Returning Home is Never Easy
Out on HBO Max today, Frayed tells the story of Sammy Cooper, a wealthy London housewife who is forced to return to her hometown in Newcastle, Australia.
The series, which originally premiered first in the U.K. and Australia, is set in 1989 — and that 80s backdrop is immediately part of the show’s charm.
Frayed is inherently bizarre and its characters take some getting used to, especially Sammy, who is played by creator, writer, and producer Sarah Kendall. Ultimately, though, this is a story with a lot of heart, and it’s one that sees many of its characters grappling to figure out who they are and who they want to be.
The death of Sammy’s husband isn’t the emotional starting point you’d expect. Instead, the way he dies becomes a running gag (the details are quite over the top), and it’s only exacerbated by the fact that he had been committing fraud, which leaves his family broke.
Sammy and her two children, Lenny and Tess, then have no other choice but to leave for Australia to be with Sammy’s family — a family she hadn’t seen in decades.
It’s a culture shock for them, and another running joke becomes the way Sammy has fully embraced her London accent, which everyone from her past finds to be ridiculous. Sammy has become an entirely different person, and by the end of the sixth episode, we have a decent idea of who she was before and why she left when she did.
Her return home is complicated. Not only does it mean facing her mother (Kerry Armstrong), who had previously had trouble with alcohol, and her brother Jim (Ben Mingay), who resents her for leaving in the first place, but it also means facing an ex-boyfriend (Matt Passmore) whose life was upended by her departure.
Frayed tries to do an awful lot in these six episodes. It’s not just Sammy’s journey we’re following.
It’s the journey of each of her children, who feel wildly out of place at their new Australian school; of her mother, who finds herself trying to date for the first time since her own husband died; of her brother and his relationship with his scamming girlfriend; and of her ex and his mother’s declining mental state.
Frayed is also the story of an entirely dysfunctional family living in a small town. Sammy’s relationship with her brother is, on the surface, filled with childish sibling infighting. We learn that it’s much more complex than that, but that’s not explored quite as deeply as it could have been.
That all sounds very serious, but it’s layered underneath that 80s backdrop and bizarrely dark humor which gives the story an entirely different spin. And despite that, the story is filled with the kinds of authentic, slice-of-life moments that make it completely relatable.
There’s one scene, in particular, with two characters having sex in a car that winds up with one of them pulling a hamstring that feels like the most realistic depiction of such an interaction you could possibly watch on television. The high-school antics, and a high-school dance, feel all too real as well.
The entire cast does an amazing job. Sarah Kendall’s portrayal of Sammy is perfect, and Kerry Armstrong makes Sammy’s mother, Jean, one of the most enjoyable characters to watch on the series.
The character we feel the most for, though, turns out to be Sammy’s ex, Dan, played by Matt Passmore. Formerly one of the most popular kids in school, he’s now a gym teacher with a pretty fabulous 80s mustache. He clearly has a soft spot for the teenagers in his school, and he’s skilled at putting bullies in their place. It’s sweet to watch.
Then there is Abby, the popular high-school girl who lives next door and makes life even more difficult for Tess and Lenny. It doesn’t take long to realize there is more to her beneath the surface. That’s true of Chris as well, a former classmate of Sammy’s who has his own feelings about the person Sammy has become.
The series takes on complex topics like suicide, abortion, and abuse, but it does so without letting go of its dark humor.
Still, a few more episodes to flesh out some of its ideas could have gone a long way in making this story feel more connected and giving more depth to its characters. As it is, Frayed is doing so much at once that it really feels a bit disjointed — at least until it’s shocking, uncanny ending.
I won’t give that ending away, but I will say it’s one that will leave you feeling unsettled while also bringing the episodes to a perfectly satisfying close.
Are you planning to watch Frayed? Let us know your thoughts on the series in the comments below.
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Frayed is currently available to stream on HBO Max.
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Ashley Bissette Sumerel
Ashley Bissette Sumerel is a television and film critic living in Wilmington, North Carolina. She is editor-in-chief of Tell-Tale TV as well as Eulalie Magazine. Ashley has also written for outlets such as Rolling Stone, Paste Magazine, and Insider. Ashley has been a member of the Critics Choice Association since 2017 and is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic. In addition to her work as an editor and critic, Ashley teaches Entertainment Journalism, Composition, and Literature at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
One thought on “Frayed Review: Returning Home is Never Easy”
“Frayed” is one of the few comedies I’ve seen in the past few years with actual guts. It doesn’t pander to postmodernist ideas of what the world is, how people are supposed to interact or the language they are supposed to use in order to be sympathetic. It simply tells a (not so simply structured) story and allows the characters to be who they are without censoring them. This is so clearly NOT American TV because it’s honest, doesn’t presume to teach cultural lessons and is laugh out loud funny without apologies for how the comedy sausage is made. What a concept, tell a story well, in the format you feels best suits it and let anybody who has a problem with it go stuff themselves. Truly not a modern American television show.
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