Alma's Not Normal: How anger and spa breaks fuelled new series
Alma's Not Normal: How anger and spa breaks fuelled new series
Red hair. Pink fur coat. White helmet. Green tartan trousers. Huffing and puffing uphill on a rickety old bike towards the job centre.
Not quite as graceful as ET on two wheels but that first scene introducing the titular character in Sophie Willan's sitcom Alma's Not Normal created an instant connection with a new audience.
It's over four years since Willan's semi-autobiographical debut series lifted us during the lockdown gloom. Now the irrepressible Alma (Willan), an aspiring working-class actress from Bolton whose mum Lin (Siobhan Finneran) is struggling with heroin addiction and mental health issues, is back.
For the uninitiated, the premise may sound bleak, but not a bit of it. Pathos might never be far away but humour is always at the forefront.
Having tried her hand as both an escort and a sandwich "artiste" at SubNGo in series one, Alma and her best friend Leanne (Jayde Adams) are on the hunt for jobs, fun and sex in the highly anticipated second series. But this time, cancer also looms large as Alma's grandma Joan (Lorraine Ashbourne) receives a diagnosis.
Many aspects of Alma's life reflect the real-life experiences of Willan, who was brought up by her grandmother Denise, between stints in foster care.
Willan later turned to sex work to make ends meet, but prior to that, she had caught the acting bug while on holiday with Denise in Ibiza at a hotel drama club.
She joined a theatre company in Manchester and set about forming her own, before landing the Caroline Aherne bursary in 2017, which develops new comedy talent. And Alma was born.
Denise died of cancer while Willan was filming the first series of Alma and she dedicated her second Bafta win in 2022 to her zebra print-loving gran.
"The second series was very hard to write, because some of it was stuff that I was currently dealing with rather than stuff that I processed long ago," Willan tells the BBC.
"I suppose what's always helped me is finding the political. As soon as it feels political or [it's] a cultural, social problem, then I get dead angry and that’s why the comedy's great because it's anger. And love."
Her main bugbears are "the mental health system and the care system and all of the cuts to it.
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"I wanted to take the state to task. I wanted to show the impact on vulnerable women.
"And what happens to my mum in [the show] is systematic failure. And then also cancer on a more personal [level]... everyone experiences it and we don't know how to talk about that."
She explains: "Even though we all seem quite narcissistic in writing, actually you can't just write about yourself, it has to feel like it's about something bigger than you."
She jokes that procrastination is often her biggest enemy. "I lived in a spa for a year!" she giggles. "It wasn’t even conscious, I’d just go around the country, avoiding [writing].
"Which is why you need to pay working class people well.. I get Ubers now!"
Her self-care also includes Merlot, she laughs.
