Who is popular today?

The 30-something creators, Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, play their 13-year-old selves in a carthartic comedy that has lots of laughs but never mocks
On paper PEN15 has a gimmick, which is that the two 31-year-old writers and creators of the 10-part comedy series – Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle – play their 13-year-old selves trying to navigate middle school, amid a cast of actual teenage actors. So rapidly, however, are they subsumed into their parts that (apart from Konkle being a head taller than everyone else) it becomes unnoticeable. It’s only when you lift your head for air after each half hour of agonising immersion in their immaculately and intimately detailed pubescent world that you remember how old they are, and the collapsing of chronology makes the show’s depiction of the malevolent first stirrings of adolescence even more exquisitely painful.
We are still the children we used to be and the product of the experiences we had then and the influences that gathered around us. I don’t know what it was like for the cool kids, but the rest of us will watch PEN15 (Sky Comedy) round-eyed with horror and laughing through considerable tears. Continue reading...