This hilarious mockumentary set in a US school is full of astonishingly rapid-fire jokes, immaculate timing and note-perfect acting. It’s absolutely charming
Do you remember the weeping exhaustion you felt home-schooling in lockdown, and the fathomless disbelief and raw gratitude you felt towards those who make it their daily business to instil knowledge in young minds; the profound reverence you gained for their pedagogic skills, as you downed a glass of wine for every minute you spent trying to ding basic facts into the heads of your recalcitrant young? How deeply you meant it when you lay on the floor every evening and cried to the heavens that all teachers should be showered with gold and worshipped as gods, before you crawled into bed preparing to begin the whole bloody thing again tomorrow?
Abbott Elementary (Disney+) will bring that time flooding back, but this time with laughs. Sometimes painful, bitter laughs, but laughs nonetheless. The new (to us – it has been out in the US for a year) mockumentary sitcom about an underfunded primary school in west Philadelphia was created by comedian Quinta Brunson, whose mother taught in the same institution for 40 years. Brunson plays young, still-optimistic teacher Janine Teagues, always doing her beleaguered and frequently bewildered best. “Great communication skills, Bria!” she says, indefatigably, as yet another infant charge tells her she has thrown up everywhere. When she’s not teaching, she is researching the best way to raise funds for school supplies, trying to fix hallway lights, unblocking toilets or embracing new educational methods that might help her deprived students. It’s a measure of Brunson’s skill as a writer and performer that despite her palpable innate goodness, Janine is never smug or boring, but instead so desperately appealing that long before the end of the first episode you want only good things for her, for ever.
