Karl Puschmann: Life tears us apart in Dylan Moran’s snackable new sitcom Stuck

Morgana Robinson and Dylan Moran in Stuck, streaming now on TVNZ+.

Middle-aged malaise comes at you fast in Dylan Moran’s new snackable sitcom Stuck. It’s a series about relationships that have become so comfortable over the years that they’re barely hanging in there, about shared dreams fading, about resentment riding high and emotions that won’t grow as a couple change their ways and take different roads. It’s not so much love tearing people apart, but more the ongoing humdrum and relentless continuum of the everyday tearing people apart.

Streaming on TVNZ+, each episode is served up at a piping hot temperature of between 10 and 15 minutes long, meaning you can wolf down the entire five-episode first season in around an hour. Which is arguably the best way to consume it.

While plots bubble up to the surface and arcs run over the series, it’s fairly faithful to the ordinariness of life. Moran has made a career out of his curmudgeonly comic persona and keen observations and they’re both in full display here. Not surprising as he created and wrote the show.

He stars as Dan, a weary ad exec who gets fired in the first episode for being too old. Times change and his once hip campaign character ideas, like the Phantom Sausage, are no longer en vogue. His pitch of a muscled chook with neck tattoos named B Droolin’ for a fast-food chain proves to be the final nail in his career coffin.

While he spirals down, his long-term partner Carla’s career in the wellness industry is floating to the top. Carla is played by Morgana Robinson, who provides a spunky ying to Moran’s dour yang.

Over the series he wallows in his unemployment and disastrous job interviews, dulling the pain with endless bowls of sugary cereals and general moping. His lack of a plan to get back on his feet begins to grate on Carla, who is increasingly disillusioned with their circumstances; they’re stuck in a flat they can’t afford to move out of, and her dreams of parenthood are slipping further away to the point she’d be happy with a cat. Only Dan has determined that ownership of a feline is relationship suicide. All that coupled with his fake promise of fixing her bedside cabinet sees the lovebirds starting to sing very different songs.

To his credit, Dan is trying to address his depression and poor mental health. He regularly sees his doctor and asks for medication. However, his doctor is also a mate who refuses to prescribe him anything, instead insisting that his problem isn’t depression, it’s just that he’s “an asshole”.

I know none of this sounds very funny. And Stuck isn’t laugh-out-loud. Its humour is found in its low-key zing and real worldy-ness.

“Who are we? What do we want? Why do we never have any fun?” Carla asks Dan in the first episode turning to a magazine’s relationship quiz for the answers while he does his best to bring the convo to a close.

Finally, she asks the million-dollar question; “Do you love me?”

“Uncontrollably. In great rolling spasms. Like the sea,” he answers. “Or pigs waking up.”

Robinson and Moran have a lived-in chemistry that lends believability to their relationship, even when it strays into Moran’s love of the off-kilter, like when they decide to rob the local boutique deli while wearing matching trenchcoats and not much else. Scenes like this show why the couple work and why there would have been that initial attraction, despite the gap in age and philosophical outlooks. But then their literal high fades and life swings back in like a broken bedside cabinet door to boring everything out again.

It’s unlikely you’ll fall in love with Stuck. It’s very particular in its outlook. Every smile is followed by a frown and drama is always right behind every joke. But due to its brevity, it’s worth a fling.