'Bored' Review: A Promising TV Pilot About Love, Youth And Brexit [SXSW]
(The SXSW Film Festival may have been cancelled, but our coverage will go on with reviews of films and TV shows made available to our critics.)There's this weird in-between time when you've put in the work for a thing but the work for said thing hasn't paid off just yet. That feeling manages to be one of the most nagging, frustrating sensations on the spectrum of nagging and frustrating sensations. It's the time of doubt, confusion, fear, a whole gamut of questions that all ultimately end in "did I waste all of my time and make a terrible mistake?"That's exactly where Jamie (Coral Amiga) finds herself at the beginning of Georgia Oakley's pilot of for the new series Bored, which is currently looking for a home (and will hopefully find one).Thankfully, Jamie's got a best friend. Eve (Nicole Hartley) serves as Jamie's polar opposite – at least as far as we can tell in the pilot. Where the former is driven and close to the vest, the ladder's freewheeling and ready to live her life to the fullest. Eve's not getting wrapped up in goals or relationship labels! The two friends are living in a 2017 London in the middle of Brexit. Folks their age are drinking, partying, and doing their best to forget the mess that's going down around them.But sometimes we manage to bring the mess home in our strongest efforts to escape it. After partying a touch too hard, the ladies wake up to the realization that they've slept together. No big deal for Eve! She spends the majority of the episode ready to jump the soonest available candidate (get it, girl). Jamie, on the other hand, finds herself pretty stressed about the ordeal. The questions going forward will be whether or not the girls' friendship can survive their one-night stand. Because who doesn't want complicated emotional issues while the world around them crumbles? All in all, Bored presented with an effective pilot. The viewer immediately gets a solid sense of who our protagonists are, and what they stand for. Their world is fittingly small. Despite living in a politically tumultuous London, each of the ladies is selfish in their own way. They find themselves wrapped up in their own troubles despite the larger picture, so it makes perfect sense that we find ourselves in all of two locations in this first episode(both of which are used incredibly well). Equally as important as its effectiveness is whether or not the darn thing manages to be entertaining. I'm here reporting live from quarantine that I had a giggle or two! Both Eve and Jamie are relatable in their own way, and the dry wit serves the series well. There's a bathroom scene that somehow managed to be both completely farfetched and perfectly believable at the same time. I imagine we'll see plenty of awkward moments, difficult conversations, and a surprising amount of poignance from this one in its future. Kicking things off with two inherently selfish protagonists is a great way to have solid laughs and real conversations organically. Bored's pilot builds a really sturdy foundation for the series to springboard from. There's a "no expectations" kind of vibe that means things can head anywhere, especially with these two polar opposites in the drivers' seat.