Have you seen the previews of the new television show Divorce with Sarah Jessica Parker coming soon to HBO? Here’s how one website describes the show: “Taking a hard look at love and marriage through a darkly comedic lens, Divorce is raw and uncomfortable at times… but it’s also one of the best new comedies of the year.”
Parker stars as Frances, a suburban wife and mother of two teenagers, who finds herself increasingly irritated with everything her husband Robert (Thomas Haden Church) does. The way he hums along with Coldplay in the car. The way he repeats funny lines on TV instead of laughing at them. His mustache. And when their married friends Diane (Molly Shannon) and Nick (Tracy Letts) have a very public spat during a birthday party, that spurs Frances to make a decision that’s been years in the making: She wants a divorce. They proceed through a bitter, contested divorce.
Apparently, the storyline also has an element of class commentary with Frances and Robert clearly upper-middle-class. He’s a contractor and she’s an executive recruiter opening an art gallery, living in and idyllic, snow-covered neighborhood in upstate New York lined with beautiful homes. Insightfully, at one point, Frances asks in the aftermath of Diane and Nick’s fight, “How do you go from eight years of a happy marriage to wanting to blow someone’s head off?”
It will be interesting to see whether people are interested in watching other people go through a divorce. Most of the people that I know who go through it don’t want to relive it themselves or through the eyes of others. But maybe the writers and stars can make it relevant and not too depressing to make people want to watch it.
Divorce premieres on HBO on October 9th at 9:00 p.m. Here’s the link to the Divorce trailer.