Home TV Reviews ‘Rain Dogs’ Review: Daisy May Cooper and Jack Farthing Shine in Messy HBO Dramedy

As emotionally fraught as it is sharply funny, this new series strikes a delicate balance between the pain and poetry of the everyday.

Image via HBO

Life, for all the ways we strive to make order out of it, is abundantly messy. Tragedy and comedy can become closely intertwined as we try to keep our heads above water when everything threatens to drown us. In Rain Dogs, the terrific yet tumultuous HBO dramedy, we observe this in all its complicated glory. Frequently bleak yet enduringly beautiful in its exploration of a troubled group of characters, it has all the potential to be one of those sleeper hits that we look back on at the end of the year as one of its very best. In particular, it proves that Daisy May Cooper can and should be in absolutely everything. Playing the working-class single mother Costello Jones, she brings a sharp wit and a real heart to a painful story. Over the course of its eight episodes, she is put through the wringer over and over again. As such, this series most certainly won’t be for everyone — it doesn’t hold back from the darkness of the world — but it is worth wrapping yourself in no matter how much it may end up hurting.
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Created by Cash Carraway, Rain Dogs first introduces us to Costello when she seems to be at her lowest. An aspiring writer who is barely making ends meet by working at a London peep show, she is being kicked out of her flat. Making matters more complicated is that Costello isn’t alone as she has her daughter Iris (Fleur Tashjian) with her. She loves her deeply and wants to do everything she can to give her a stable life though the circumstances of the world remain increasingly stacked against her. We see this in every aspect of Cooper’s multifaceted performance as even temporary solutions her character finds come with their own array of problems. Recently sober, she does have some people around her who also care about her that we come to know. There is Gloria (Ronkẹ Adékoluẹjo) who works at her father’s funeral home yet ends up running into some troubles of her own. Most consequently, it is the chaotic Selby (Jack Farthing) whose story will become most interwoven with Costello’s. A wealthy gay man who has just gotten out of prison for a violent assault, he is completely lost in his life.

Image via HBO

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The thing separating them is that Selby has financial stability that Costello does not. He is then able to offer her and her daughter help when they need it most, though we come to see that he is just as broken as she is. Taking on the role of their “savior” carries greater weight with it that he is ill-equipped to handle as he is just as capable of turning around and hurting them. They are frequently the only ones that each other has, but there is a growing feeling that they are bad for each other. At one point, he says “it is completely normal to hate the people you love” and proceeds to beg her to not leave him. When that fails, he destroys the thing that is most valuable to her just because he knows that it will hurt her just as he is hurting. It is toxic, uncomfortable, and depressing to witness, though that is very much by design. One hesitates to even call Rain Dogs a dramedy, as there is often very little comedy to find in key scenes. Still, this makes the times when it discovers humor into breaths of fresh air after wading through deep water. Cooper crushes in these moments, making even just a glimpse where her eyes widen into one that carries with it a mixture of mirth and melancholy.

There is a delicate balance that Carraway must strike, and there are many sequences where it feels like she could be losing a handle on it. The absurdity of small moments is what manages to cut through the noise, bringing into focus how it is that people manage to endure. It is not solely because of strength as everyone will eventually reach their breaking point. Rather, it is both out of necessity and her friends that Costello keeps moving forward. There is no glamour to it as this is not a story about triumphing over adversity in a conventional sense. It doesn’t hold back from observing how life can be unrelentingly punishing while also being uproariously funny at the same time. There is one extended joke surrounding camming about midway through that, while not the darkest of the show, is itself infinitely bleaker than most other shows would even scratch the surface of. For Rain Dogs, this is merely one of several developments that become part of its precise portrait of life. With all its pains, there is pleasure sprinkled throughout as well. It’s just that none of this is ever permanent when anything and everything can collapse down on the characters’ heads.

As Costello tries to find a way forward through the rubble of her life for her and her daughter, this impermanence gets brought increasingly into focus. She isn’t without flaw, and she herself remarks at one point that she isn’t a good person. This is said with a wry sensibility in a comedic back-and-forth, though it also proves to be revealing about how she knows she may be falling short when it counts. With each promise she gives that she’ll sort things out, we hope for the best though steel ourselves for the worst. This may sound like a miserable experience, but it also can be an almost lyrical one. Nowhere is this better encapsulated than in a scene with Costello alone in a bathroom stall. As she confronts a choice she is facing alone, it takes on a poetic tone, and it is as if we can see the paths opening up before her. There is a sense of woe of what awaits Costello, Iris, and yes, even Selby at the end. At the same time as tragedy looms, Carraway guides us through a well-crafted journey in Rain Dogs — from its fraught beginning all the way to its fitting conclusion.

Rating: A-

Rain Dogs premieres March 6 on HBO and HBO Max.