Billie Piper can really dance. That much is clear from the crazy opening scene of I Hate Suzie Too, in which she outsmarts The Masked Singer and performs a demented solo on the Crystal Waters hit Gypsy Woman, dressed as a cat on acid. It rocks.
And it makes for a suitably off-kilter reintroduction of Suzie Pickles, the embarrassed pop star who went so hysterically off the rails in I Hate Suzie.
Every scandal-stricken reality star rolled into one, Suzie saw her career, life and mental health take a hit as “intimate” footage of her in a raunchy act went viral.
Where I Hate Suzie charted the decline and fall of its anti-heroine, this three-part sequel finds its hard-to-love but curiously compelling character who picks up the pieces, fights for custody of her son, rebuilds her career in the face of public antipathy and generally they refuse to crumble when, with the odds so against her, it would be easier just to crumble in some dark corner.
That we care at all about a character who is, on the surface, irredeemably self-centered is thanks to a nuanced performance by Piper that alludes to just enough emerging self-awareness in Suzie to make us believe that maybe, just maybe, she is not a completely lost cause.
Along the way, we get a gleeful ax about the fleeting nature of fame and the weirdness of a reality TV world where nothing at all is real.
Suzie’s desperate attempts to find her way back into the public’s affections via the horrors of the celebrity hoof competition Dance Crazee hold up a sharp mirror to how damaging the pursuit of fleeting fame can prove to be.
Where I Hate Suzie was a horror show that reveled in its star’s misery, I Hate Suzie Too cuts much closer to the bone by giving heart to Suzie.
Now all Billie has to do is sign up for Strictly, fall prey to The Curse, and the blurred lines of reality will be completely gone.
I Hate Suzie Too airs tonight on Sky Atlantic and is available to stream NOW.
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