'A love letter to women who haven’t ticked all the boxes'

Sharon Horgan is creating a new comedy-drama for UKTV’s W channel.

Women On The Verge is based on the best-selling book Woman On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown by Lorna Martin, which itself was based on her Grazia magazine column Conversations With My Therapist. 

Kerry Condon – Stacey in Better Call Saul – Nina Sosanya from W1A  and Eileen Walsh, who appeared as Kate in one episode of Horgan’s Catastrophe will star in the series when it airs later this year.

Set in Dublin, Women On The Verge is described as the ‘darkly comic tale of three career-driven friends in their 30s who share the same nagging concern – that while their friends and colleagues seem to be increasingly in control of their lives, they seem to be moving in the opposite direction’.

Horgan picked up the project in 2011 and has since been working with Martin to turn the subject matter into a TV show.

Martin said: ‘I feel incredibly lucky to be working with such outstandingly talented people to bring these stories to life. The show is a love letter to women who haven’t ticked all the boxes and whose lives are a bit messier and more complicated than they ever thought they’d be.’

The show – which will also air RTE in Ireland – is the latest in a huge batch of commissions for Horgan through the production house Merman, which she runs with business partner Clelia Mountford.

Horgan is executive producer and co-stars in Aisling Bea’s forthcoming Channel 4 show Happy AF; she is piloting Shining Vale, a horror-comedy about a dysfunctional family that moves into a possessed house for America’s Showtime; BBC Two has comissioned a second series of Motherland, which she co-writers with Holly Walsh and Graham and Helen Linehan; and she’s working on a fourth series of Catastrophe wit Rob Delaney.

In Women On The Verge , Horgan will also play enigmatic therapist Dr F, advising Condon’s character Laura, who is in the process of potentially ruining her career in investigative journalism by sleeping with her boss. Her ambitions take a knock however when she appears to be supplanted in his affections by a young blogger called Samara. 

Sosanya plays Katie, a single mum who yearns for a sibling for her young daughter Ella. And Walsh plays Alison, who, after a series of disastrous Tinder-based one-night stands, finds herself back together with her ex, Martin.

Adam Collings, channel director for W said: ‘Women on the Verge offers a highly original, no-holds-barred take on a subject matter that will be instinctively familiar to the W audience. Taking the gloss of Sex and the City, combined with the brutal honesty of Girls, this is a project unlike anything else on British TV.’

Pete Thornton, senior commissioning editor for UKTV said: ‘The chance to bring this project to life for W represents an exciting opportunity for us. We’re delighted to be working with the talented and much in demand teams at Merman and House Productions alongside a brilliant cast – led by the extraordinary Kerry Condon - to delve into the chaotic, sometimes tragic but always gripping lives of Laura, Katie and Alison.’

In a statement, Clelia Mountford and Sharon Horgan added: ‘We were huge fans of Lorna’s book  that told her personal story so compellingly and honestly.  We are very happy that we’re finally getting to bring her story to the screen and destroy whatever privacy she has left.’

Justin Healy, executive producer for comedy at RTÉ added: ‘The fact that UKTV and Sharon were keen to produce an Irish scripted comedy is testament to the fact that Irish people are incredibly funny and that we have some of the best creative comic voices around, something we will continue to develop and support at home and internationally.’

Published: 6 Jun 2018