For me, I Hate Suzie was easily Billie Piper’s finest hour since the criminally underrated and underplayed Honey To The Bee.
And If I Hate Suzie was addictive chaos you reveled in, its sequel I Hate Suzie Too won’t disappoint.
Few months have passed since Suzie Pickle ended her marriage, she was shamed all over the press, discovered she was pregnant, deserted by her agent and her career fell off a cliff.
Now she’s living in her sister’s flat, her husband is blackmailing her through a vicious and expensive divorce, and she’s resorted to taking part in a nonsensical celebrity dance show Dance Crazee, but it soon becomes clear she has a real mountain to climb to win back her adoring fans, as she’s booted out in the first round.
All in all, times are pretty bleak for Suzie.
In I Hate Suzie Too, however, Piper and her long-term collaborator Lucy Prebble have produced a sequel even more fearless and unapologetic than the first run, with a show that falls somewhere between Fleabag on a bender and particularly distressful episode of Black Mirror peppered with the joy that is Piper’s OTT dancing which is genuinely too thrilling to comprehend for a nostalgic 90s child like me.
After filming the first series was so anxiety-inducing, Piper and Prebble weren’t sure they could face returning to Suzie’s nightmare. Thankfully they did, and we’ve got a three episode miniseries to binge over Christmas.
But it wasn’t always clear what direction would be next for Suzie.
‘I think we had some strong instincts,’ says Piper.
‘We wanted it to be formally interesting which we didn’t think we could do by maybe doing eight other episodes.
‘The first series had a really strong form and structure so we wanted to do something different and these single episodes that span over Christmas allowed us to be quite big with the idea.
‘To have such strong theatrical songs, where there’s dance and joy alongside quite extreme behaviour, it’s a nice tonic to have with the dancing.’
‘I feel like I was a slightly different person back when we made season one, I certainly had more fear,’ adds Prebble.
‘Now I feel more confident creatively when we make certain decisions. So I would say it was certainly lacking as much fear.
‘Also knowing there was going to be this visual component meant I was less worried about doing a lot of painful stuff because we knew there was going to be that balance so maybe it was psychologically quite interesting to go from that extreme distress, anxiety and tension to somebody smiling and ding a glittery dance and not worry the audience is going to be repelled.’
Their newfound courage results in some monumental moments in television. One specifically stands out.
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Remarkably, to my knowledge, there’s never been an abortion shown on screen at all, at least in this level of detail.
During the opening minutes of I Hate Suzie Too, Suzie takes her pills, talks to a bot when it seems as though nothing is happening, before bleeding out, having an abortion in the bath and flushing the foetus down the toilet.
Watching such an everyday experience, I couldn’t believe something I’ve talked about with so many of my girlfriends I’ve never actually seen before.
‘We say that all the time,’ says Piper. ‘It’s so interesting to speak to people about it but it’s so true – when do you ever see it in that level of detail? And it’s obvious why you don’t, people find it to be so contentious and traumatic.’
‘But it’s not contentious or traumatic to portray an abortion which happens all of the time at different stages,’ insists Prebble. ‘It’s a very common practise.
‘It was important to me to show how it works – you get pills delivered to your home, you might web chat with somebody and then they’re inserted, the way they’re inserted.
‘It is not about here’s a moral controversial subject for us to explore it’s about of course the woman who is pregnant at the end of season one has an abortion. What else do you really think is a good idea for this person to do?
‘So then you show it and how it happens which happens all the time – for good reason and to good consequence in the sense of people’s lives and social fabric. So I think why wouldn’t you show it? It’s weirdly censorious not to. It’s sort of a political statement to not show it more than to show it.’
Neither Prebble or Piper have ever been wallflowers, particularly when they come together.
Their first collaboration was the hugely successful Secret Diary of a Call Girl, following prostitute Hannah Baxter which arguably gets more recognition for transforming the language and discourse around sex workers now than it did then.
While on the surface it appears they’ve managed to charge ahead with whatever forthright ideas they might have, that hasn’t always been the case.
Prebble surprises Piper to admit she has faced resistance to include moments that were as unapologetic and honest as Suzie’s abortion.
‘Only in the early stages of my career,’ said Prebble which is met with: ‘Really? With the things that you wrote about?’
‘Secret Diary there was a lot of pushback about things.’
‘What about your first play?’ asks Piper.
‘Well theatre is very allowing but screen people got nervous back then. But one thing to be grateful for is I’ve never ad creative push back from Sky.’
‘We’ve been largely supported right until the very end and that’s rare especially when… I think in other homes (channels) these ideas would have been shut down,’ agrees Piper.
Looking beyond I Hate Suzie Too which closes the TV calendar of 2022, next year marks a significant milestone in Piper’s pretty unique career – 25 years of her debut single Because We Want To.
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‘Can you believe that? When is it?’ she asks me.
It’s June, June 9 to be precise.
Personally, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be throwing a bank holiday.
That might be unlikely, but regardless, she’s up for raising a glass.
‘Well, let’s celebrate, like I needed another reason to go out and party.’
I Hate Suzie Too airs on December 20 on Sky Atlantic and will be available to stream on NOW.
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