Description
Flowers is an imaginative, cinematic show about an eccentric and dysfunctional family struggling to hold themselves together; starring Olivia Colman and Julian Barratt, and written and directed by award winning Will Sharpe.
Maurice (Barratt), the author of illustrated children’s books The Grubbs, and music teacher wife Deborah (Colman) are barely together, but yet to divorce. As Maurice fights inner demons and dark secrets, Deborah tries to keep the family together at all costs and becomes increasingly suspicious that Maurice is in a secret homosexual relationship with his Japanese illustrator Shun (played by show creator Will Sharpe). Anna Chancellor plays Aunty Viv, Deborah’s vivacious sister.
The Flowers family live in a creaky, messy, crumbling old house with Maurice’s ailing mother Hattie (Leila Hoffman) and their maladjusted 25-year-old twins Amy (Sophia Di Martino – Friday Night Dinner, Mount Pleasant) and Donald (BAFTA-winning Daniel Rigby – Eric and Ernie, Cardinal Burns). Both are competing for the affection of neighbour Abigail (BAFTA-winning Georgina Campbell – Murdered By My Boyfriend) as they struggle to burst through the confines of their arrested development.
Swinging from the profane to the profound, the Flowers family and their often self-inflicted crises, are surrounded by odd neighbours who become the agents of further heartache and misfortune. Despite living on top of each other the family will do anything to not communicate, pushing them and their struggles with love and life to extreme and ridiculous places.
Flowers is a narrative comedy about the complexity of familial and romantic love and the social constraints that turn those issues into hilariously awkward and heart-breaking situations. It’s a bold, dark, but ultimately uplifting show that explores how secrets and sadness can sometimes give way to hope and those odd moments of colour that make life worth living.