Pramface – Teen Moms Meets Modern Family Through the British Filter

This show was constantly running promos on HULU so I finally dug in out of desperation for something besides House of Cards and Downton Abbey. I needed to fill that void of delicate dry British humor and all the crap on Lifetime, and Pramheads fit the bill perfectly.

It involves a girl Laura (Scarlett Alice Johnson) who gets impregnated by a 16 year old who can’t even put on a condom properly. I mean come on British people, I know instructions aren’t written on the side of the plastic but didn’t you ever practice with a banana? Laura’s about to go to Uni (that means college to us Americans) and decides ‘hey, I’m just going to ride this out until it’s just about too late and see what happens'. She ignores being basically a statutory rapist that is with child and decides she’s going to remain drinking buddies with her best friend from High School Yay! Totally awkward and predictable situations ahead!

Jamie (Left) and his best friend contemplate strange and impractical ways of dealing with the situation; this is the major source of the comedy throughout the beginning of the series.

Jamie (Sean Michael Verey) , said father-to-be adorably and clumsy 16 year old tracks her down until she finally has to face the fact that she’s going to have a bloody baby and bloody hell it’s going to be bloody difficult to make this bloody decision.

She decides eventually (SPOILER ALERT) fuck off, it’s in the first episode, that she’s going to keep it, and now there’s going to be a particularly British clash of manners involved when Laura’s parents who are what we can call of the Intellectual Class have to now interact with Jamies', who are not Chavs per se (again American translation – white trash) but are somewhat LOWER middle class. 

Scarlett Alice Johnson is actually quite good as 18 year old preggers Laura who has to somehow tell her no-longer-speaking-to-each-other WASPY parents that she's not all they thought she was, and she's made one huge tiny mistake.

The whole thing permeates of unimaginably easy ways of dealing with unimaginably difficult scenarios, and is actually a lot of the time just plain scientifically inaccurate, but I suppose that a suspension of disbelief goes along with any comedy serial. All in all, this is not too bad, and has some serious actors in it. No I mean it, like RADA actors like Angus Deayton, Anne Chancellor, and Bronagh Gallagher (whom I love, I mean I am so happy she’s still working, she’s a highly underrated actress).

Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is skip the Teen Mom marathons on MTV and log on to Hulu to check out this cute little show, it’s little more than that, but it’ll put you in a good mood. 

Promo below.