When you hear the news that Sarah Jessica Parker is making her first return to TV since her iconic role as Carrie Bradshaw, and that she's doing so with none other than Irish writer/actress Sharon Horgan as her showrunner, well, expectation levels were high, to say the least.
Other than the odd not-so-memorable rom-com, Parker really hasn't featured in anything worth talking about since she was Sex and the City's leading lady, preferring instead to build her SJP brand that developed off the back of being one of television's most fashionable stars. It was always going to take a juicy role and an even better script to shake off the automatic association the world has between Parker and Bradshaw, and as unpredictable a choice as it originally sounded, Sharon Horgan was the woman for the job.
For those unfamiliar with her work (get on it, already), Horgan is known these days for Channel 4's Emmy-nominated sitcom Catastrophe, which she co-writes and stars in alongside Rob Delaney. Horgan also has recently had a new show with Graham Linehan commissioned by the BBC for a full season called Motherland. Now she is making her mark across the pond as the creator of Divorce, a dark new comedy for broadcasting giant HBO which sees Sarah Jessica Parker take on the role of Frances, a woman about to become embroiled in a bitter divorce battle with her husband Robert (Thomas Haden Church).
The initial worry we had with Divorce was whether Horgan's unmistakable brand of humour would translate across the pond. It's dry, it's sarcastic, and it's relentlessly cutting. We're not saying our American friends can't handle that style of comedy, because of course they can, but there was the fear that something may just be lost in translation, or perhaps that Parker wouldn't quite be able to deliver it.
Thankfully, as the opening episode proved, Parker gets it. While there is the odd moment when you see brief snippets of a Carrie Bradshaw mannerism, for the most part, we buy the fact that SJP is now a frustrated suburban mum wondering what happened to her life.
Horgan couldn't have picked a better sparring partner for her than Thomas Haden Church either, who has the kind of dead-pan delivery that made his 'shit in the coffee pot' line the perfect opener to steal the first laugh of the show.
In fact the entire cast couldn't be more on point, with the fantastic Molly Shannon stealing scenes as Frances's bestie Diane, while we couldn't have been happier to see Flight of the Conchords Jermaine Clermont as her granola-making bit on the side - or the "bourgeois affair".
We're so far only thirty minutes into what will be an eight-episode series, but it's done exactly what an opening episode should. It's set up a story that already we can't wait to see more of, introduced us to characters we know we will love and hate, and shown that once again, Sharon Horgan knows how to give a warts-and-all look at the often hilarious cruelty and mundanity of day to day life. We're a long way from Cosmos and Jimmy Choos now, and thank God for that.