HBO Max's I Hate Suzie is ambitious, thorny, darkly humorous and incredibly charming

Vanity Fair

The British drama created by Lucy Prebble and Billie Piper, starring Piper as Suzie Pickles, brings viewers into Suzie’s experience, intimately and imaginatively communicating her emotional breakdown, says Sonia Saraiya. "Each episode explores its stated theme with unique stylistic flourishes—a fantasy sex sequence, a voiceover, a musical motif," says Saraiya. "At the same time, the show maintains a bleak comic sensibility, which I read as Suzie’s own unflagging sense of humor keeping her sane in the midst of her life being blown to pieces. Above all, I Hate Suzie is a masterclass in tone—yanking the viewer this way and that, but never quite dropping us into either the depths of despair or the indignity of laughing off the entire incident. Instead, Prebble and Piper lead us on a taut string through the months after the incident, admirably keeping the viewer trained upon Suzie’s point of the view in the midst of rather fraught territory."

ALSO:

• For a show that revolves around one character desperately trying to move forward, I Hate Suzie is smart about how it includes the past
• It took years for Succession writer Lucy Prebble to create I Hate Suzie with her best friend Billie Piper: "It was Piper who helped bring Suzie home," explains Lauren Mechling. "After years of talking about every disappointment and dream—including their shared belief that they should create something together about women and friendship—they started collaborating in a more formal way, spending days in rooms batting around ideas. They waited two years to show their work to producers or pitch to networks, wanting to be sure they had done exactly what they wanted before anyone dared give notes. Suzie is not the sort of thing that could have been dreamed up by committee, certainly not one of men."
• Billie Piper insists I Hate Suzie isn't autobiographical: "It’s not autobiographical in the moment-to-moment," she says. "My god, I would be  if people thought I was exactly like Suzie Pickles."
• How Piper defined Suzie separate from herself: "Well, look, I’m not really that much like this character, thank God," she says. "I share a lot of similarities, but there’s something slightly more hysterical about this woman. I’ve certainly been there, so it was easy for me to pull from, but the world and the themes are quite heightened. That allowed us to play in quite a bold and vivid way. At the heart of it, having something brutally honest allowed us to get slightly left of center with the world of the show, I guess."