Stream It Or Skip It: ‘There She Goes’ On BritBox, Where David Tennant Plays The Struggling Dad Of A Developmentally Disabled Girl

Shaun Pye co-created The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret and played a key supporting character in Ricky Gervais’ Extras. But he likely hopes he’s best known for his new show There She Goes, a BBC series that just premiered on BritBox. It’s an extremely personal project for Pye, as it portrays the highs and lows of his life as the father of a child who has special needs, and Pye fully admits via this show that he didn’t always handle things well. Read on for more on this remarkable series…

THERE SHE GOES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: In 2015, we see a dad and his two kids leaving their home in a city in the UK, presumably London. The younger kid, a girl, doesn’t want to go, eventually laying down in the street in protest.

The Gist: Simon (David Tennant) and Emily (Jessica Hynes) are the parents of a 13-year-old boy Ben (Eden Hayhurst) and a 9-year-old girl Rosie (Miley Locke). Rosie has a chromosomal disorder that has hampered her development; she can’t communicate verbally, using gestures and grunts to get what she wants. She also lashes out if she objects to something her parents want her to do or she doesn’t get what she wants, doing things like lying down in the street or slamming her door against the wall until the knob makes a hole.

The show flashes between 2015 and 2006, when a pregnant Emily finds out that the baby she’s carrying isn’t growing like she should. She voices her concern to Simon, but he’s busy doing “a work thing,” i.e. drinking in the pub with his doesn’t-want-to-be-tied-down friend Helen (Yasmine Akram) and other work friends. More or less, as much as he loves his son, the idea of being doing his fatherly duties still freaks him out, so he avoids them.

As we go back and forth between 2006 and 2015, we can see that Simon is a more-present dad as time has gone on, but his patience for Rosie’s behavior is still in short supply, certainly more than Emily’s is. Still, Emily wants Simon to take the kids to the park so she can work (but really play video games). When Simon tries to get Rosie in bed so he can watch some movies and drink wine with Emily and Ben, he has to bribe Rosie out of his bed with her favorite snack, then gives her the iPad to keep her occupied. But it blows back on him when she starts slamming her door against her wall. He gets so frustrated that he slugs her favorite stuffy because that’s all he can do to take out his frustrations.

But in 2006, Emily was the one who was worried about Rosie’s development; she won’t eat, she won’t smile, her head is smaller than it should be. She knows something is wrong but everyone around her, including her mother Anne (Jo Cameron Brown) think she’s being too neurotic. However, when she confronts Simon about his late nights, he surprises her by agreeing that Rosie has something seriously wrong, and he’ll make more of an attempt to be there so they can deal with it together.

Our Take: There She Goes is a fictionalized version of creator Shaun Pye’s real family life, where he’s the father of a developmentally disabled girl. In the notes we got with the screener for this show, Pye admits that he didn’t handle the challenges of being a father to a girl like Rosie during the first few years of his daughter’s life, and it’s pretty refreshing that Pye has no problem showing that Simon, his stand-in, can be a total prat, even with nine years of experience with Rosie.

The reality of the show should send a shudder of recognition through any parent, though, whether or not they have developmentally disabled kids. Despite being a pretty clever kid, Rosie’s inability to speak and tendency to lash out is reminiscent of a toddler, and we recognized the battles we had with our daughter in the ones Simon and Emily have with Rosie. And, like all parents, it’s hard to keep your cool when your kid is doing things like pouring a gallon of milk over her head.

But Pye also shows the humor and joy that Si and Emily experience raising Rosie, which is also something all parents can relate to, no matter how tough raising their children may be. It’s a very realistic and balanced look at what it’s like to raise kids, especially those with special needs, and while some of the scenes in each episode are a gut punch, the lighter moments help make this show worth watching.

Sex and Skin: Not that kind of show.

Parting Shot: After Emily brings Rosie downstairs after her meltdown, we see Simon cuddling with her. He tries one more time to get her to use her AAC board, where she can type what she wants to say. She hits some buttons, and the board blurts out “I want daddy go bye-bye,” prompting everyone to laugh.

Sleeper Star: We’re not sure how Miley Locke is so authentically able to play a girl with developmental disabilities, but she’s so convincing as Rosie that we were surprised to learn that she’s not disabled.

Most Pilot-y Line: Tennant’s native Scottish accent is very tough to decipher, especially when he’s bantering with Helen at the pub. Some of the lines we did understand were very funny, but we didn’t understand a whole bunch. This is your warning that you may need to turn closed captioning on for this one.

Our Call: STREAM IT. There She Goes is a very realistic view of parenthood, and of the hardships and joys of raising someone with special needs. It’s hilarious and tough to take, just like parenthood is, and that’s a good thing.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream There She Goes on BritBox