My Mad Fat Diary

You may have heard the hype surrounding E4's latest critically acclaimed hit drama My Mad Fat Diary, a heartbreaking and hilarious six part series told from the perspective of diary keeping sixteen year old, sixteen and a half stone, Rae Earl. Based on the best selling novel My Fat Mad Teenage Diary by the real life Rae Earl, the television series deals with body image, mental health, and relationships.

Starring Sharon Rooney as Rae, the show is set in Lincolnshire, England in the summer of 1996 when bands like Blur and Oasis ruled the Cool Britannia scene. After spending the last four months in a mental hospital following a breakdown, Rae returns home to a small council house with her mum (Claire Rushbrook) and her mum's new illegal immigrant boyfriend Karim (Bamshad Abedi-Amin) from Tunisia. She is reunited with her best friend Chloe (Jodie Comer), who is hanging out with the coolest gang in Stamford and Rae is desperate to be a part of them, but her past and her insecurities make it hard for her to fit in.

The show revolves around Rae's health issues and her reintroduction into a normal teenage world filled with friendships, romance, and uncertainity. The cast was brilliantly selected with each actor's performance feeling natural. I cannot find a moment of bad acting or a slip out of character from anyone. Rae's friends feel like people you could meet walking down the street and everyone plays their part convincingly in the series, especially "mental" characters like Tix (Sophie Wright) and Danny Two Hats (Darren Evans), fellow patients from the hospital that Rae befriended during her time there. Watching them, one easily forgets they're watching someone who is meant to be crazy. They show the human side to mental illness that often gets lost in media portrayals.

But the reality doesn't stop with Rae's weight struggles and her self-harm issues that stem from her depression. Chloe, albeit a bit annoying and shallow at times, brings up a point that rarely gets stated so bluntly: being thin doesn't make life any easier. Chloe still has problems and those do include her self-image, proving that being skinny doesn't eliminate all of life's worries. While Rae and Chloe serve as foil characters, what they both have in common is the message that your weight does not make or break you as a person. Chloe feels just as conscious of her image and what people think of her as Rae does.

What My Mad Fat Diary does amazingly is offer an honest and realistic portrayal of what it's like to be a teenager. Not only does it focus on body image and mental illness, it also discusses the trials and tribulations of friendship, love, and lust in these formative years. Rae is often seen hanging out at the pub or the chip shop with her friends, writing in her diary about her sexual fantasies featuring her latest crush, and butting heads with her mother. In essence, Rae is a normal sixteen year old and that's what makes her relatable. She is not the token fat girl, she's just Rae Earl, the nice, funny, music lover that will win you over within the first five minutes of episode one.

A story of survival while struggling with who you are growing up, My Mad Fat Diary is an enjoyable, addictive drama with believable characters, a moving plot line, and a feeling of sincerity all wrapped up in a well crafted soundtrack that will have you nostalgic for the 1990s.

Whether you weight eight stone or eighteen stone, everyone can sympathise with Rae on some level. What makes this series truly unique is the uplifting look at different body types without being stereotypical of them. No one fits into an archetype based on size and none of them are what they seem upon first glance. There's a depth to each character that is a joy to see developed and explored throughout the series. If nothing else, viewers will walk away from the show with the message that you are okay the way you are. Fat, skinny, gay, straight, mental, virgin or not. There's never a sense of shame surrounding any of these words. As Rae's therapist Kester (Ian Hart) says, "You can't spend the rest of your life being afraid of people rejecting you. You have to start by not rejecting yourself. You don't deserve it. So, from now on, people either accept you for who you are, or they can f*ck off."

For viewers outside the UK, the show can be found in its entirety on Youtube and other video hosting websites.