Joel Fry-days: Alice and Steve: Season 1, Episode 1 (2026)

*Premise spoilers*

Despite having plenty of Joel Fry’s back catalog to get through, there’s still something about new-new projects from him that excites me. This Hulu/Disney+ “wrong-com” just came out this week, so the older reviews I have on deck are on hold for the time being. New stuff takes precedent! Episode 1 has me on the fence for multiple reasons, but I’m crossing my fingers that, at minimum, there will be more/better material to come for Joel Fry.

Alice and Steve have been best friends for over 30 years. On a night out of drinking and drugs after a friend’s funeral, divorced Steve confesses to married-with-kids Alice, “I wish I was in love and…and had a baby!” Recognizing that women in their 50s can’t have babies, Alice sets out to find Steve a younger woman. Unfortunately for everyone involved, Steve finds one on his own: Alice’s 26-year-old daughter Izzy, who’s just moved back home after a tough breakup. Steve and Izzy have a drunken hookup, and in the sober light of day, both are well aware of how badly Alice would take this revelation.

So…yeah. It’s dicey from the start. The whole “let me find you a younger woman” thing already feels weird, given that Alice also immediately jumps to looking for 20-somethings. When she sends Steve to chat up a 20-something at the bar, he quickly realizes they have nothing in common. If it’s a question of fertility, there’s no reason he couldn’t have looked for someone who was 35 or 40, someone he might be more likely to share interests with. But of course, before any further search can happen, he and Izzy have their lonely drunken encounter. And if the thought of dating someone half his age seemed iffy, the thought of dating his best friend’s daughter seems even worse. He’s known Izzy all her life, and even if these sudden feelings are a newfound thing for both of them, it still feels creepy. Not to mention, there’s the obvious potential fallout to his friendship with Alice.

I do like stories about platonic relationships, although this one is clearly about to get very thorny very quickly. The episode sets up Alice and Steve’s friendship pretty well. The dynamic between Nicola Walker and Jemaine Clement feels real and lived-in—you can buy that these are two people who’ve known each other forever and have offered cheerleading, tough love, and wild fun over the years. But at the same time, we also see how they can enable each other or be codependent. The situation seems primed for an implosion, a perfect storm of these two bringing out the worst in each other. We’ll see how it goes.

Since Joel Fry is a regular on the show, we’ll go ahead and get started with characters of the week. Let’s kick things off with Nicola Walker as Alice. The first description that comes to mind with Alice is simply “a lot.” She is a lot, although to be fair, she spends a good portion of this episode drunk and/or high. But sober Alice comes in pretty hot too. In particular, she latches on hard with her affections—she asks Izzy, “Is it selfish that I’m so happy that you’re back?”, wonders if she’s allowed to kill Izzy’s ex-boyfriend, and blows up Steve’s phone when she can’t get a hold of him. Put that together with being quick to spiral, and it’s not much of a stretch to realize that Alice will turn nasty if she feels betrayed by one of “her” people.

Joel Fry plays Alice’s husband Daniel. As seems to be typical with many of his TV roles, Fry plays a pretty minor role in the pilot, but hopefully the pattern will hold of him getting a lot more to do in subsequent episodes. Here, Daniel appears in several scenes, but he’s only really featured in one of them.

After the funeral, Alice and Steve go out and get sloshed with their mutual friends. The two of them stop by Alice’s place in the middle of the night so she can grab the baggie of coke she keeps under her bed before hitting the town again. While looking for the coke, she wakes up Daniel, so our first look at them as a couple is extremely mismatched—she’s drunk, wired, and boisterous, while he’s groggy and a little confused. Daniel reminds Alice how anxious she got the last time she used coke, and when she insists, “Steve is like, he’s really upset, and I just feel like I should be there for him,” he gives her a bemused smile and says, “You’re such a good friend.” Alice crawls onto the bed at one point, straddling and kissing Daniel before distractedly pushing his face away. You get the sense that she’s an enthusiastic but irresponsible whirlwind and he’s a mild, pragmatic guy who mostly manages to roll with his wife’s chaotic energy. But again, this scene introduces us to them as a couple while Alice is exuberantly drunk and Daniel just woke up, so the contrast might not be quite as pronounced under normal circumstances.

One other scene I want to mention. Daniel doesn’t have any lines in it and spends most of his limited screentime out-of-focus, but I still enjoy it for Joel Fry’s non-verbal acting. The morning after Alice and Steve’s wild night out, Alice has a conversation with Izzy while Daniel is in the background making breakfast. At first, he’s just chopping vegetables, then hesitates a bit before going to the fridge, and his body language unmistakably conveys the sense of, What am I missing/forgetting? Hmmm… Ah, that’s it! He’s not remotely the focus of the scene—Daniel is literally a blurry figure in the background—but Fry’s physicality still tells you where his head is at, and I just love that!

Okay, first impressions on Alice and Steve:

Accent Watch

Southern British English.

Recommend?

In General – So far, it’s dubious. I haven’t been fully sucked in, and I’m guessing things are about to get pretty unpleasant. As we go on, I’ll have to see if I think the show is worth whatever ugliness is on the way.

Joel Fry – A tentative maybe. I like what we’ve seen of Daniel so far, even though we don’t get much. I’m hoping that he’ll have more to do in future episodes and this won’t end up being a thankless role for him!

Warnings

Thematic elements (including a sexual relationship with a creepy/troubling setup,) language, sexual content, and drinking/drug use.

Other Doctor Lives: Time: Series 2, Episode 1 (2024)

Jodie Whittaker is in the second season of this British drama series centered around a prison. This is the first of three episodes, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The show has a strong cast, and we’re introduced to an interesting range of storylines.

A prison van transports three inmates to Collingford Women’s Prison. Orla, a struggling single mom who fiddled with her meter to reduce her electric bill, is bewildered to find herself with a six-month prison sentence. Kelsey, a teenage heroin addict, is a repeat offender. And Abi, who’s just been transferred from another facility, is serving a life sentence for murder. As Orla tries to get a grip on what’s happening to her, Kelsey gets some important medical news and Abi is blackmailed by an inmate who knows the real details of her crime.

The Orange is the New Black comparisons are probably inevitable—aside from the setting of a women’s prison, our main viewpoint character is a white woman who’s never been to prison before and thinks she has nothing in common with the other inmates. But this show has a very different style and sensibility than Orange is the New Black. It has more of the feel of a kitchen-sink drama, albeit one set in a prison. Right now, Orla, Kelsey, and Abi’s storylines are still fairly separate, but things are beginning to come together.

I experienced this with Peter Capaldi and Criminal Record, but British shows dealing with the criminal justice system are interesting to me because I don’t fully know how their issues stack up compared to the ones in the U.S. Virtually everyone we see working at Collingford cares about the inmates’ well-being and is portrayed sympathetically, which makes me suspect this series has some sugarcoating at work. That said, the inmates are portrayed as complex and human. They’ve all broken the law, and they’ve all made bad choices—some of them are definitely continuing to make bad choices—and pretty much everyone is on guard against everyone else. But we also see moments of connection where the characters look out for each other or realize where someone else is coming from.

Excellent cast all around. Kelsey is played by Bella Ramsey, who I still know best from their turn as Lyanna Mormont on Game of Thrones (I’ve heard great things about The Last of Us, but I really don’t think I could handle watching it.) Of the three main characters, Kelsey has the roughest edges and gets up to the most trouble—between her youth and her addiction, she often acts without thinking things through. However, we get flickers of vulnerability and introspection from her as well. And Tamara Lawrance, who I loved as Viola in the National Theatre Live production of Twelfth Night, is wonderful as Abi. While she’s incredibly guarded and hard when she needs to be, she offers her experience and insights to those who will accept it, all the while wrestling with her own inner struggles. The show also features Siobhan Finnernan (O’Brien from Downton Abbey) as the prison chaplain.

As Orla, Jodie Whittaker strikes all the right notes. She definitely doesn’t have Piper Chapman’s class privilege, and even before prison, she’d had her share of tough experiences. Orla grew up in foster care because of her mom’s alcoholism, and as an adult, she’s struggling to provide for her own three kids on her meager salary. Still, she enters prison with a whiff of “I need to speak to the manager” energy. She legitimately thinks there’s been some kind of mistake at first and assumes she’ll be out within a day or two, once things have been cleared up. She begs to be allowed two phone calls in one day while she’s in processing, and she definitely sees a divide between herself and the other inmates, not thinking of herself as a “real” criminal. Repeatedly, she argues, “I just fiddled the leccy!”, like she still can’t believe she’s here.

At the same time, Orla is very sincerely going through it. A six-month sentence—out in three with good behavior—is a far cry from Abi’s life sentence or Kelsey’s expected three-and-a-half years. But it’s still enough to throw her entire life off-kilter. Her boss won’t hold her job for her, and Orla already knows she’ll struggle to find new employment when she gets out. She’s terrified that her kids will get put into care, but there’s very little she can do to influence what’s happening to them from her cell block. Although Orla has an attitude with the other inmates, she’s been thrown into the same boat with them and is finding out how much havoc the criminal justice system can wreak, even through her comparatively minor crime.

First impressions:

Accent Watch

Northern.

Recommend?

In General – So far, I’d say yes. The drama gets a little overwrought in moments, but I’m liking the characters and the way they interact.

Jodie Whittaker – Yeah. Whittaker is doing a nice job with a character who’s in an overwhelming situation and not handling it very well.

Warnings

Violence (including self-harm,) strong thematic elements, drug use, and language.

Joel Fry-days: Drunk History: UK: Series 3, Episode 4 – “Kerry Howard and Joe Lycett” (2017)

This is Joel Fry’s last episode of Drunk History: UK, and I think it’s my favorite. He has a good-sized role in his story, and this is the best narrator he’s had. Really fun!

Again, just two stories. We learn about “The Great Train Robbery” and “Beatrix Potter & Peter Rabbit.”

Joel Fry is in the first story this time around, so I’ll quickly cover the Beatrix Potter story and then come back around to his stuff. It’s narrated by Kerry Howard, who did the Queen Victoria story from his first episode. There’s no gross humor this time around, but I’m still not really a fan of her narration style. The way she does character voices and stuff, it feels like she’s trying too hard to be funny, and part of the beauty of Drunk History is the narrator not trying to be funny. There are a couple good bits in here. I like the note that Peter is Beatrix’s favorite rabbit in her garden to draw because “the guy…the guy’s like Kate Moss. He knows how to pose.” And when Beatrix is trying to publish a paper she wrote on mycology, I’m amused by the sexist gatekeeper shooing her out of his office, saying, “Get, woman! Get! Get out of the science box.”

When I heard “The Great Train Robbery,” I assumed it was going to be about the famous silent film from the early 1900s. So color me surprised when our setting was “the swinging ‘60s”—I didn’t realize there was a real English train robbery with the same name (which I assume it got because of the film.) This story is narrated by Joe Lycett, who I think is the best narrator within these three episodes. His delivery is really fun, veering from ultra laidback to sudden bursts of energy where he just shouts out of nowhere. I especially love this line, from the police officer called to the scene: “They’re within thirty minutes of this location. Scour! I have foiled their plan, those fucking pricks. ‘Cause I’m a clever cat. Meow!” Ha!

Joel Fry plays Gordon Goody, a thief/hairdresser and one of the masterminds behind the robbery. He approaches Bruce Reynolds with the initial idea, and they assemble a crew to pull it off. He’s terrific throughout the reenactment—he follows the varying pitch of Lycett’s delivery throughout, cranking the intensity up or down on a dime as needed. Note: Lycett doesn’t always say who’s speaking with his dialogue, so as I talk about my favorite parts, I’ll put Gordon/Fry’s bits in bold:

One thing I always love on Drunk History is when the cast lipsync the drunken narrator’s verbal slips, and we get some fun instances of that here, like as Gordon cuts Bruce’s hair while they conceive the robbery. “Bruce says, ‘Literally all I can afford is this haircut, so I’m really hoping this is a good haircut, Gordon.’ And Gordon’s like, ‘Don’t worry about it, I’m very good at women’s hair—men’s hair.’ ‘What’d you say?’ ‘...Men’s hair.’” I get a kick out of Fry’s facial expressions as Gordon realizes the slip and emphatically corrects it.

And this exchange in the middle of the robbery is just hilarious. I love everything about it—the dry delivery of the absurd dialogue, Fry perfectly lipsyncing along as Lycett stumbles over his words, and the impeccable “you have got to be shitting” me facial expressions/body language:

“‘I can’t drive this train. The trains I’ve driven have been slightly different in the—kind of, in the buttons and stuff.’ And they go, ‘Well, it says go or stop.’ And he’s like, ‘I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know which one to press on that one.’ ‘Peter, surely, if you—if you’re—if you really think about it, probably go is the one.’ ‘Yeah, I mean that’s what they want you to think!’”

Oh my god, it’s so funny! The whole exchange plays out fantastically, with the perfect cap of Lycett finally announcing, “They press go, they’re going. Thank fuck for that.”

Side note: it’s interesting that Joel Fry plays white historical figures in all three of his episodes on the show. Drunk History has never shied away from racebent casting where appropriate—the first episode I watched of the main show featured John Cho as William Shakespeare!—but given that Fry made multiple appearances, it feels a little surprising that he didn’t play a Black person at least once. I wonder if the UK version of the show didn’t have as many stories about BIPOC historical figures.

All right, that’s it on Drunk History: UK! Final thoughts:

Accent Watch

Not applicable—he’s lipsyncing other people’s words.

Recommend?

In General – Slightly complicated question. The pilot is pretty yikes, but the two season 3 episodes I watched are great! I don’t know if it’s just the first episode that’s bad, or it took them a while to settle into things. Maybe start from the end and work your way backwards so you can stop if it gets awful?

Joel Fry – I would! Fry does a great job with the format, and his performances here are always funny.

Warnings

Smoking/heavy drinking, language, sexual content/references, strong thematic elements (including jokes about nonconsensual sex in the pilot,) violence, and strong gross-out humor in the pilot.