REVERSAL OF FORTUNE (THIS WAY UP, SERIES 2)

With a BAFTA already under its belt for its first series, the folow up season of Aisling Bea's Channel 4 and Hulu sitcom 'This Way Up' has an awful lot to live up to.

The first series not only established Bea and Sharon Horgan's Aine and Shona as a wickedly funny sister act, it also expertly blended comedy with thought provoking drama.

The first series also drew praise for the way it tackled mental health issues, feminism, Ireland's attitude to the English, family and sexual politics.

Series two marks a turning of the tables, though, for its main protagonists - two Irish ex-pat sisters living in London.

(SPOLIERS ALERT!!!)

After the inaugural series focused on her recovery from a mental breakdown, Bea's TEFL teacher has now become the more content of the two.

Her character Aine is flushed with the promise of a burgeoning romance with Tobias Menzies' Richard who seems smitten and is desperately trying to loosen up 

Having been Aine's rock in series one, Horgan's financier Shona is much more unsettled as she moves into the plush modernist home of her besotted fiancé, Aasif Mandvi's Vish while he works in Manhattan.

With Shona and Vish due to marry, she is wrestling with the guilt of having had a secret bisexual fling with her business partner, Indira Varma's Charlotte.

Her willingness to move on from her dalliance with Charlotte not only creates an awkward atmosphere in the office but it weighs her down as she also continues fret about Aine.

Shona simply doesn't willing to burden her sister with the guilt she feels about cheating on Vish and, as a result, she spends much of the second series teetering on the edge of disaster.

Over the course of the second series, Shona and Aine focus on preparations for her wedding - attending a dress fitting and having a drunken hen do with Vish's sister Chetna Pamdya's Seema - as well as tending to their messy careers and personal lives.

Aine joins Richard as they wave goodbye to his French teenage son and her pupil, Dorian Grover's Etienne as he boards a Eurostar for a trip to Paris.

Initially, the couple keep their affair secret from her boss Ekow Quartey's James who Aine is hoping to start a teaching enterprise with and also Richard's housekeeper Lorraine Ashbourne's Marcia.

But with Aine's flatmate, Kadiff Kirwan's Bradley taking a protective interest in the relationship and Ricky Grover's Tom who she met in rehab keen to meet up, she also runs the risk of everything falling apart.

With Bea on scriptwriting duties, Kirwan as script editor and Horgan as a script consultant, series two once again aims for the right blend of laugh out loud, occasionally bawdy comedy and heart tugging drama.

However with the shadow of Covid and the Grenfell disaster looming large over proceedings, the tone of series two seems much darker than its predecessor with the balance tipping much more heavily towards relationship drama.

Series two belongs even more to Bea, with many of the laughs generated by the Kildare comedian's character Aine.

Occasionally, though, the humour seems a little too forced.

Series two opens with dialogue that comes dangerously close to a 21st Century stereotype of the mischievous, irreverent Irish person, as Aine and Shona joke about the sauna they are, comparing it to a Catholic confessional.

Scenes where Vish and Shona engage in online sex and Richard and Aine fret about his inability to perform in bed feel like gauche attempts to mine the same awkward, bawdy humour as Phoebe Waller Bridge's hit 'Fleabag'.

Those uncomfortable bawdy sequences often jar and detract from a show which can deliver a really effective, punchy, observational one liner.

Indeed, it is telling that often the best moments in series two are its most dramatic, as when we learn of the sudden death of a major character.

Likewise in a sequence where Aine is returning in a taxi that passes the Grenfell site after an unsettling night out with Richard and his friend, Jamie Michie's Mark.

While Bea undoubtedly runs away with the acting honours, Horgan certainly has her moments - particularly in the final episode.

Varma, Mandvi, Menzies, Kirwan, Quarry, Dorian, Pamdya and Ricky Grover continue to provide solid comedic and dramatic support.

Ashbourne and Michie are good additions to the cast, while Todor Jordanov, Pik Sen Lim, Jassem Mougari and Daniela Spataru continue to amuse as Aine's adult pupils in her English language classes.

Sorcha Cusack's eccentric Irish mammy Eileen is confined to Zoom chats in a manner which befits a sitcom series forged in the Covid age.

And by the time you reach the cliffhanger ending of series two of 'This Way Up,' you feel it is an absorbing, if slightly disappointing watch.

While the half hour doses of the show make for good relationship drama, it feels like it could do with more astute observational humour and less attempts to shock its audience into laughter.

There is still plenty of legs left in Bea's sitcom and there is no doubt its treatment of mental health issues, in particular, is impressively handled.

However if series two achieves anything, it is to underline just how brilliantly crafted the first series was.

Series two demonstrates just how difficult it is to achieve that delicate balance of sharp, observational comedy and poignant relationship drama.

Here's hoping a third series rediscovers that rare formula.

(The second series of 'This Way Up' was broadcast on Channel 4 between July 14-August 18, 2021 and was also available for streaming in the UK and Ireland on All4 and in the United States on Hulu)

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