Small-town drama Somebody Somewhere season 2 finds poignancy and laughs in the face of life’s disappointments

The audience was encouraged to identify with these misfits. “So if you got a bump on your nose or a lump on your toes, do not despair,” the theme song exhorted us. “Be like the Raggy Dolls, and say I just don’t care.” Forty years on the survival spirit of that joyous ditty lives on in Somebody Somewhere (NowTV and Sky Atlantic), a show about rising above disappointment, dislocation and getting left on the shelf.

Grown-up Raggy Doll and single middle aged woman, Sam (Bridget Everett), returns from big city life to the small mid-western town she came from and tries to make a second go of life as she deals with the death of her sister.

She’s quietly appalled at the parochialism of the place, stung by the barbs of her surviving sister, and frustrated at her parents slowly reverting to being children. To cope with all this she forges a friendship with an old friend from drama group, Joel (Jeff Hiller, whose warmth borders on a superpower), who introduces her to the other dolls and shows her the subtle streak of camp that lives beneath the macho exterior of the town.

He encourages her to rediscover her passion for singing and in one amazing moment they duet on a version of the Peter Gabriel song, ‘Don’t Give Up’, a brilliant choice for being both a desolate rust belt hymn (“in this proud land we grew up strong…”) and a gay classic by virtue of having Kate Bush doing the original female vocals.​

Like the Raggy Dolls before them, Sam and Joel were outliers in Season 1. While so many successful comedy shows can feel like a barrage of clever zingers, Somebody Somewhere had a strange unhurried magic: entire episodes could pass with someone just going for a drive and running a few errands.

It felt like it replicated the lack of incident, and slow realisations of real life and scenes, many of which felt improvised, were broken up by a droopy horn that was both full of pathos and slightly redolent of incidental clown music.

There were overtones of Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion in the friendship between Joel and Sam, especially as they laugh up their sleeves at a contemporary who had written a memoir exposing their teenage foibles. The first series seemed to sail slightly below the radar – how many big series centre around an overweight middle-aged woman?

However, warm reviews – it has a rare 100pc rating on Rotten Tomatoes – and word-of-mouth buzz made it something of a sleeper hit and, praise be, it’s been renewed for a new season.

This time around Sam has more fully immersed herself in the quiet round of deeds and days in the town but life around her has moved on. The catty sister has gotten divorced and her daughter, Sam’s niece, who she was very close to, has moved away to college. Sam’s mother, who struggled throughout the first season, has been confined to an assisted living facility.

The actor who played Sam’s father, Ed (Mike Hagerty) died during the hiatus between filming the first and second season, and this loss lends an extra texture of sadness to the moment when Sam, surrounded by the old man’s farm equipment, says: “It just feels really weird to be here with all his stuff. I know he couldn’t have cleaned out this barn – it would have broken his heart. I didn’t know it would break mine.”

What makes Somebody Somewhere so fabulous it that it takes this grief and transmutes it into something irreverent and spirit affirming. Joel and Sam are now living together, which cleverly brings their great chemistry of the first season even more into focus. There’s a feeling of riding along with two friends who trust each other enough to riff entertainingly.

Everett might have made her name as an Amy Schumer sidekick (she was in several sketches in her show) but with this relaxed and offbeat series she has shown she is a star in her own right.

And the good news is that the powers-that-be at HBO know what they’re dealing with: it was reported last month that Somebody Somewhere has been renewed for a third season.

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