We discovered the Canadian actress Annie Murphie a few weeks ago when we watched Schitt’s Creek. She played the adorable Alexis Rose, a free-spirited character, relatively rare on the small screen. When we learned that she was the lead actress in Kevin Can F**k Himself, which ran from 2021 to 2022, we had to give that TV show a go.
From Wikipedia: “Set in Worcester, Massachusetts, the show explores the life of Allison McRoberts, a woman struggling to redefine her life amid an unhappy marriage to her husband, Kevin, a narcissistic man-child whose cruel and manipulative treatment of her borders on domestic abuse. The show presents contrasting perspectives of her experience: a typical sitcom wife when Allison is with her husband, shown with a multiple-camera setup and canned laughter, and as a woman navigating a difficult personal path, filmed in the single-camera setup more common to television dramas.”
Christina and I loved how the TV show, while superficially being a simple comedy, is, in fact, a fantastic dark comedy all thanks to Annie Murphie, a formidable actress who, with her mannerism, sometimes feels like an older sister of Alexis Rose (which is fitting I guess).
The main characters in the show are quite interesting starting, of course, with Annie Murphy as Allison McRoberts, Eric Petersen as the pathetic husband Kevin McRoberts, Mary Hollis Inboden as the dependable and sarcastic Patty O’Connor, Alex Bonifer as the stupid and perturbed brother Neil O’Connor, Brian Howe as the forgettable Pete McRoberts, Candice Coke as Detective Tammy Ridgeway, Raymond Lee as the romantic Sam Park and Jamie Denbo as the pragmatic Diane McAntee.
