23 January 2020
Mrs Fletcher, one of 2019’s top TV shows, was directed by a South African woman
Nominated for Best Limited Series at the 2020 GLAAD Media Awards, Mrs Fletcher is a dual coming-of-age story chronicling the personal and sexual journeys of an empty-nest mother and her college freshman son, who both embrace their newfound freedom with mixed results.
South African Liesl Tommy (Insecure, The Walking Dead, Jessica Jones) is part of the all-women directing team, which also includes Oscar nominee Nicole Holofcener (Orange Is The New Black), nine-time Emmy nominee Carrie Brownstein (Portlandia, Transparent) and Gillian Robespierre (Silicon Valley) – “some of the best female directors on the planet,” according to Uproxx.
“I devoured Mrs Fletcher’s first season over the course of a single weekend.” – GQ
As the series begins, Eve Fletcher (Emmy nominee Kathryn Hahn from Transparent), the executive director of a senior centre, drops her only child off at college and returns home to a very empty house. Meanwhile, Eve’s son Brendan (Jackson White from SEAL Team) struggles with his transition from popular high school jock to woefully unwoke – and increasingly unpopular – college student. “In high school, everyone liked me,” he says. “And now, I’m just, like, the bad guy. I don’t know how that happens.”
GQ included the seven-part series in their best of the year roundup, saying, “I devoured Mrs Fletcher’s first season over the course of a single weekend. The elevator pitch—a bored single mom suddenly discovering her sexuality in her forties—is fun enough, but the show’s layered nuance turns it into something different entirely… Mrs Fletcher not only shows us the power of growth, of fallibility, of empathy, and of fucking up, but it shows us those things can be sexy as hell, too.”
“At the same time we’re watching Eve opening this Pandora’s Box of internet porn, we’re watching her son who … is being raised on how to be intimate or vulnerable, have a courtship, dating … through their devices, through technology and porn…” – Kathryn Hahn
Uproxx also included the show in their 10 Best TV Shows of 2019, saying, “Mrs Fletcher is a moving half-hour character study about a 46-year-old single mother… who turns to online porn to fill the time after her son goes to college. The porn, in a lot of ways, awakens and liberates a character who had spent the last 18 years being defined as a mother. Meanwhile, while she’s finding herself, her son is losing himself in a progressive college environment that doesn’t accept meatheads. It’s a sharply written, funny, and touching series.”
“It is a dual coming-of-age story,” says Hahn. “So at the same time we’re watching Eve opening this Pandora’s Box of internet porn, we’re watching her son who, like so many young people today, is being raised on how to be intimate or vulnerable, have a courtship, dating – all the things that we used to do face-to-face – through their devices, through technology and porn…
“And so at the same time that Eve is going through this, seeing the internet as a new world, Brendan is now being launched into this new world of actual intimacy and real humans when he goes to college. Tom has set up something so potent because we get to see both sides of it.”
Look out for familiar faces like Owen Teague (Bloodline, IT: Chapter One and Two), Screen Actors Guild nominee Domenick Lombardozzi (Boardwalk Empire), Critics Choice nominee Casey Wilson (Happy Endings), and Emmy nominee Jen Richards (Nashville), who is excellent as Eve’s transgender writing teacher Margo – a character who Indiewire says “flouts trans stereotypes in several notable ways: She’s well past transition, her trans-ness is secondary to her character’s purpose in the story, and — most importantly — she’s desired and courted by a cis man.”
Jasmine Cephas Jones, the star of the hit musical Hamilton and daughter of This is Us Emmy winner Ron Cephas Jones, also shines as one of Brendan’s more patient fellow students.
On Rotten Tomatoes, Mrs Fletcher has an 83% critics rating, with the critics consensus calling it “empathetic and poignant… the perfect showcase for the luminous Kathryn Hahn.”
Binge Mrs Fletcher first on Showmax in South Africa here. As Indiewire wrote after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, “I could watch 100 episodes of Mrs Fletcher… A smart, thoughtful, and hopelessly addictive adaptation… Ultra-charming.”
