The Mafia Only Kills in Summer

The first thing you realise when watching I Hate Suzie is how randomly cruel the show is. At the beginning of the first episode, we watch Suzie’s life completely implode over the course of a couple minutes. I can’t remember where I was or how I was feeling when I started watching most of my favourite shows, that isn’t the case with I Hate Suzie. After I was suddenly broken up with, my dad put on the pilot thinking it was a sitcom. And while it definitely didn’t cheer me up, it was the perfect thing to watch in that moment.

Based on lead actress Billie Piper’s real life, I Hate Suzie (Lucy Prebble and Billie Piper, 2020), follows former child-star and current c-list celebrity, Suzie Pickles (Billie Piper), whose personal life implodes after explicit pictures of her are leaked. Told through the stages of grief, I Hate Suzie was the show that made me laugh and cry the most in 2020. Most of this was due to Billie Piper’s outstanding performance. Through her script and performance, Piper created the perfect female antihero. A darker, funnier Fleabag, Suzie is the perfect balance of charm, narcissism, self-destruction, and guilt. However, unlike other women in the genre, Suzie is allowed to be truly bad. She is never redeemed, and her actions aren’t justified by a tragic backstory, instead Suzie can do bad things and be sad when bad things happen to her.

Even though our issues were completely different, it felt like me and Suzie understood each other. I knew when a notification feels like sucker punch, the dread of finding a new rock bottom and thinking about all the ways you could’ve stopped it happening. Watching it gave me I Hate Suzie the catharsis people get from burning photos of exes and smashing plates. Every week I’d go back to Suzie and together we’d process what had happened. After a week of being upset and saying the wrong things, watching Suzie do the exact same was like a warm blanket. Suzie was never told that she knew how to love better than anyone else, because she doesn’t, most of us don’t, that doesn’t make us deserve cruelty. In the peak of my break-up self-loathing, when everyone either pities you or thinks you’re a monster, having a show sit down in front of me and tell me that I was right about being awful but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be upset about them. When it felt like everyone was lying to make me feel either better or worse about myself, I Hate Suzie was the honesty that I craved all week.

You could be thinking that; “I can be awful and miserable because she is too!”, is a terrible message. And it is terrible, it’s negative and self-indulgent. But I hate films and tv shows with a message. It feels like being talked down through a screen. I want to be understood not told what do to. I probably was miserable and awful and self-indulgent after my breakdown; I don’t doubt my ability to be dramatic. But after spending all day dealing with people trying to cure how I felt, the painkiller I Hate Suzie provided was a massive relief. I hope tv has more characters like Suzie Pickles in the future, because I don’t watch tv to find role models, I watch it to know I’m not alone in how I feel.

Katie Mckenna