YOU'RE NOT WATCHING “BIG MOOD” AND IT SHOWS

The second part of the title of Camilla Whitehill’s comedy drama, Big Mood, is a reference to mood disorders. Bipolar, to be exact, the condition her protagonist Maggie has been diagnosed with. The first part is a reference to pretty much everything else, as Big Mood tackles some big topics, chases big laughs, romps through big adventures, with big gestures and big cameos. It’s undeniably ambitious. And here's the twist: it all actually adds up to something truly clever.

The Tubi TV original stars Nicola Coughlan (who you probably know from Bridgerton and Derry Girls) and Lydia West (who you should definitely watch in He Had It Coming) as two best friends trying to hold onto each other while one of them is in the middle of a mental-health crisis. On the surface, it’s a funny, slightly messy friendship comedy about two women making questionable choices and doing their best to keep life from falling apart. But the more you watch, the more it becomes something darker, sweeter, and harder to shake.

So any time somebody asks me what show they should watch next, I have the same answer: Big Mood. And now I'm telling you.

In the opening episode, struggling playwright, Maggie is on a mission. And on a scooter. The scooter, unfortunately, turns out to be an expensive and a mistake, so she gives it away to a passerby. She needs her best friend Eddie to take the day off from running the bar her late dad left her and come along to Maggie’s old grade school, where she’s been invited to give a speech about her career in theater. Mostly, though, Maggie is hoping to reunite with her old history teacher, Mr. Wilson, the object of a passionate teenage crush after he saved her from a lecherous math teacher. “Because he wouldn’t shag a child!” she beams, lost in fond memory. “Wow,” Eddie replies. “We should nominate him for a Pride of Britain award.”

Off they go, and a parade of increasingly manic hijinks ensue. Which is very much expected sitcommery until Eddie asks, as they escape the now chaos-filled school, if Maggie is, well, manic. And she is. She has bipolar disorder, and she's stopped taking her meds because she can’t write while she’s on them. Thus, we find ourselves in this bleaker territory for the rest of the six-episode series, which explores the limits of a decade-long friendship between the two women as the pressures of post-20s life start to mount. “I fix problems—you have them,” says Eddie. But no relationship can survive such a state forever.

By the finale, Maggie’s lithium poisoning leaves her unable to show up for Eddie when Eddie needs her most. Eddie, fresh from selling her late father’s bar, is ready to leave for LA. And when they finally face each other—Eddie with suitcase in hand, Maggie unable to apologize—the show leaves us wondering what comes next for this messy, magnetic, deeply codependent duo.

Season 2, released last month, throws us right back into its uniquely absurd rhythm, starting with a chaotic wedding episode full of exactly the kind of shenanigans this show does so well.

Spoiler alert: Eddie comes back from LA, but not in the way Maggie expects. She returns with a new best friend in tow, Whitney (played by This Is Going to Hurt's Hannah Onslow), an American light-healer influencer whose entire presence feels scientifically engineered to ruin Maggie’s day. Suddenly, Maggie isn’t just trying to reconnect with Eddie. She’s trying to figure out whether there’s still room for her in Eddie’s life at all.

While Season 2 shifts more of its focus onto Eddie’s struggles, the heart of the series is still the same: healing, friendship, and the extremely inconvenient truth that loving someone doesn't automatically mean you know how to help them.

You can definitely feel the shades of Ilana and Abbi from Broad City in Eddie and Maggie’s friendship, with that intense, down-for-anything best-friend chemistry that makes friendship feel like its own great romance. There are also obvious shades of shows like Aisling Bea’s This Way Up, another drama-comedy that tackles mental health, and, of course, Fleabag, particularly that show’s first season (pre-hot priest).

Coughlan is a force of nature, funny to her bones but able to deliver the depression and deep reckoning that comes with learning that you cannot escape your mind’s wiring and misfiring by simply wishing it away.

But as much as this show is about Maggie’s literal ups and downs, Eddie is every bit as important and deserves to be recognized for being the one stabilizing force in Maggie’s life.

And Eddie’s life is not without its problems. (Like the rat-infested bar she inherited from her father.) Whitehill is careful to give her some meaty storylines of her own rather than simply letting her be a foil for Maggie. She’s a problem solver, a fixer, in work and in friendship, which can inadvertently cause more problems for herself. (Someone needs a 10-step self-care routine.)

It's all so well done, especially by a writer making her small screen debut. Whitehill’s scripts move with real confidence, jumping from absurdity to pain without making either feel like a detour. And it's so densely packed full of jokes, you almost have to watch it twice to catch them all. But the comedy never undercuts its serious material; it makes it more honest. Because that's how life feels. You can be in the middle of a genuine emotional crisis and still notice that the room you're crying in has horrible lighting. You can be depressed at a themed birthday party and still clock the insane commitment of someone dressed as Laura Linney.

Big Mood understands that healing is rarely cute in real time. It can be embarrassing, selfish, impulsive, and occasionally dressed up as a scammy wellness package. The show is sharp about bipolar disorder, and even sharper about friendship, and funny enough to keep you clicking "next episode".

There's a faint suspicion that the market for comedies with the twist that one of the main characters is experiencing or has experienced bad mental health has likely reached its saturation point. But in an era when TV has given us a steady stream of existential millennial tragicomedies, Big Mood feels like it belongs in that lineage while still doing its own weird, whimsical, and emotionally honest thing.

So consider this your formal nudge: Big Mood is a whole mood. It made me hyena laugh, ugly cry, and say "WTF" out loud to no one but my TV, which is basically the holy trinity of a good, good binge.