Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/BBC America
Once again, BBC has transformed a one-woman stage show into a whole mini-series. The last adaptation was the triumphant Fleabag, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s play-turned-series about a fourth-wall-breaking woman on the verge of a life crisis. Why not try this again? Enter Mood, based on Nicôle Lecky’s one-woman show Superhoe.
For the most part, the stage-to-screen formula works again. Mood courageously introduces us to a highly unlikable woman protagonist, Sasha (Lecky), and, somehow, convinces us to empathize with her. Sasha’s got quite a bit on her plate—she hates her mom (Jessica Hynes) and her grungy step-dad (Paul Kaye), as well as their annoying tweeny-bopper daughter (Mia Jenkins). They kick Sasha out of the house after she’s accused of arson, a fire she may or may not have set at her boyfriend Anton’s (Jordan Duvigneau) home. On the street and broke, Sasha loses herself in a humdrum world far away from the superstardom that she craves.
She wants to be a singer, rapper, songwriter extraordinaire. All she is right now, though, is tired, lost, and out of money. Quickly, though, Sasha finds a way to make boatloads of cash and get a little famous while doing it, too: OnlyFans. (The show uses a knockoff, but the platforms are essentially the same; people (usually women) post intimate photos and videos of themselves for paid subscribers.) Carly (Lara Peake), a woman Sasha meets while hanging out with her drug dealers, convinces her to join the platform after the pair move in together. Soon enough, they’re using their collective following to sell videos of themselves, meet sugar daddies, and go viral for hot posts online.