The actor is magnificent in this bleak, beautiful comedy drama – which skewers the grotesque realities of class and sex inequality like nothing else
Rain Dogs is only eight half-hour episodes long, but it’s a slow burner. My first instinct was to recoil from Cash Carraway’s black comedy as if, to borrow one of many visceral images from it, it were a coffee-colonic induced poo thrown at me. Rain Dogs’ comedy is so black at first it seems to obliterate any possibility of light or warmth. The stark opposite of funny. Despair-inducing, in fact. However, just as I urge you to stick with this nasty, brutish series, please read on.
We meet Daisy May Cooper’s Costello Jones – sober 99 days – as she’s being evicted from her council flat with her daughter, Iris. Episode one sees her go on a desperate hunt around London to find them a bed for the night. They try to sleep in a launderette. They break into a friend’s car so Iris can attempt her homework. Finally, they take the last available option, inevitably the most dangerous one, and bed down in the cupboard of a pervert (pervert is a word that comes up a lot in Rain Dogs. Also nonce. And whore). He makes Costello put on a pink satin nightie and tells her not to worry because she’s not fat, she’s “just got a food bank body”. She’s rescued by best friend Florian Selby, a filthy rich, entitled, self-annihilating “classical homosexual” with strong Withnail vibes who’s just been released from prison. The half-hour of hijinks ends with them breaking into Costello’s old flat, right back where they started. See what I mean about despair-inducing?
Rain Dogs aired on BBC One and is now available on BBC iPlayer.
