After watching Kat Sadler on screen in BBC’s Such Brave Girls, I had high expectations that she would be effortlessly witty and hilarious, but I was still surprised when, within five minutes of logging onto our video call together, I was in fits of laughter first thing on a Tuesday morning. 

Don’t worry: you don’t need to book a chat with her to experience Sadler’s warm and infectious energy – the actor and comedian has managed to bottle it up into her new series.

Such Brave Girls is not your typical family sitcom. It follows the story of sisters Josie (played by Sadler) and Billie, along with their single mother Deb, as they attempt to navigate their lives as a family armed with nothing but debt, poor judgment and a desperate need for love and affection. It’s a refreshing exploration of relationships and mental health – particularly focusing on how we cope and talk about our mental health with our loved ones.

It’s a show that I haven’t been able to stop telling people about, even though I finished watching it weeks ago. The story and characters make fun of themselves – with genius comedic timing – while tackling hard topics such as trauma, mental health issues and complicated relationships. For Sadler, seeing Such Brave Girls on screen is the final part of a long process. The writer started working on the show in 2020 after a catch-up phone call with her younger sister, Lizzie Davidson (who plays Billie), in which they both shared what had been going on in their lives.

Davidson had accrued thousands of pounds worth of debt and Sadler had been sectioned during lockdown. Sadler wanted to capture the way her family talk to each other when it comes to topics like mental health. 

“There’s this dark and numb side of it because when it affects your life so much and you have to talk about it, it’s not something you can deal with sensitively every day,” she tells Stylist. “I wanted people to see, understand and maybe even relate to how the characters talk to each other about their trauma and vulnerabilities because that’s how we deal with it in my family. Maybe people aren’t saying the kind of things we say in the show in their own homes, but I actually think they are as it makes it less scary.”

A lot of Josie and Billie’s experiences in the series are taken from real-life inspiration. “They talk and interact with each other the same way my sister and I do – turning our own experiences into something that gives us back some power in the situations we’ve been in by putting it into the sitcom space.”

Because of its roots in their reality, Sadler envisioned herself and Davidson appearing in the show but that doesn’t mean it still hasn’t been a “bizarre” experience for the writer. “I thought I’d made the biggest mistake of my life but then I’d look over at my sister and that feeling would disappear and we’d just say, ‘It’s a bit funny that we’re both here doing this, right?’ and it’d feel OK again.”

Sadler always saw the potential in Davidson’s acting and she wanted to show the world how talented she was at a time when her sister was starting to lose faith in her career. “I wanted to prove to her [Davidson] that she’s such a brilliant actor and she had the funniest perspective on the character, especially as a lot of Billie’s storyline is inspired from Lizzie’s own experiences.”

For example, in Such Brave Girls, Josie works in a bookshop that was taken from Sadler’s own life and Billie works in a children’s play centre, which was taken from Davidson’s real-life experience of working at the London Dungeon as one of the scarers. It was these small nuances that Sadler wanted to make sure were included as that was where “a lot of the comedy happens”.

“I wish I could go through the series with you and dissect which scenes are dangerously close to reality,” Sadler laughs.

Working with your family can be a whole new experience in itself and Sadler and Davidson did find it tricky to begin with. “We’d have these huge arguments before filming a scene and even watching the show back now, I can tell exactly which scenes followed our fights.” Even though Sadler also found it odd having to give her sister notes (“It’s not our usual dynamic; she’s the alpha”), the pair found their groove with the process and Sadler is hugely grateful for getting to experience it all with Davidson. “We had similar perspectives on everything in terms of what we wanted to bring out of particular scenes, how to make it funny and what we wanted to prioritise.”

One standout feature of the BBC series is how many scenes occur in the family bathroom. If it’s a heated argument or a cathartic cry, it’s happening in the bathroom. “For my family, the bathroom is the office and communal space where we’d have our intense talks or hatch up game plans,” Sadler says. “Some of our worst plans were thought up in our bathroom.” Due to the intimacy of the space, Sadler wanted to bring that into the show and the pink-orange tiled bathroom features in nearly all the episodes. After telling her that my sister and I used our bathroom in a similar way, she asks me if we ever locked the door, which we didn’t. “Same! My mum would always be shocked if we ever did, telling us there were no secrets in our house.”

Such Brave Girls may have only dropped on BBC iPlayer last month but we’re already wondering if a second season could be on the cards. “I hope so. I’ve got loads of ideas I want to build on and hopefully the response to the show so far means I can be free to explore even weirder ideas. But nothing is guaranteed,” Sadler shares. 

One thing’s for sure, we’re going to be thinking about Josie, Billie and their mum Deb for a long time to come.

Images: BBC