If hell is other people, then it might not require death to reach it. Just ask Rachel Lewis (Amy James-Kelly), born into a family that squashes her dreams and leaves her exhausted from 4 a.m. drills to prepare for the End Times. For this Mancunian teenager, the apocalypse is later, but Hades is now.
Rachel's family belongs to an evangelical, doomsday-awaiting sect, the Order of the Divine Rod. Her father, David (Simon Bird of The Inbetweeners), is a pompous buffoon with a stunningly awful bowl haircut, a nearly supernatural ability to sort mail, and a tendency to use scripture to mask his insecurities. Her mother, Fiona (Kate O’Flynn), is just as pious but deeply dissatisfied by her marriage and lack of career. And her younger brother, Aaron (Harry Connor), can’t wait for the End of Days; he passes the time until that glorious inferno by painting pictures of his dad being violently torn to pieces.
However much this sounds like the setup for a harrowing tale of abuse, Everyone Else Burns is actually a delightful and extremely silly six-episode comedy that premiered on British television earlier this year and begins airing on The CW Oct. 26. The jokes come thick and fast, and though Rachel may be having a pretty miserable time, the viewer won’t.
The series begins with the Lewis family committed to preaching, doomsday prepping, and shunning former congregants who have turned to “drug dealing,” a.k.a. opening a café that sells caffeinated beverages. But Rachel is slowly coming into her own. Encouraged by her teacher (the always delightful Lolly Adefope) to pursue her dream of studying medicine and inspired by a chance encounter with dreamy young dogwalker Joshua (Ali Khan), Rachel slowly begins to engage in “sinful” acts like eating birthday cake and volunteering at an assisted living facility.
Bird and O’Flynn’s impeccable comic timing lands even the most absurd lines, like the parents’ extreme hyper-religious disapproval of Rachel’s straight-A grades: “A 5/5 for effort! Where did we go wrong?” But what makes the show special is the quiet devastation James-Kelly brings to the material. The scenes with Joshua, where Rachel tentatively opens up to new possibilities outside of the order, are breathtakingly lovely. Even the simplest pleasures, like those provided by a decaffeinated latte or an old smartphone handset, movingly spark joy in a young woman who had always been taught that what she wants doesn’t matter.
Everyone Else Burns is the sort of laughs-at-any-cost sitcom rarely made in the U.K. nowadays. Beyond Rachel, it’s uninterested in making its characters likeable, and the satire is rarely self-serious beyond a few “patriarchy is bad” nods. The production values aren’t anything to write home about, but there are plenty of visual gags to pick out in the background, like the increasingly homoerotic depictions of Jesus in Aaron’s paintings and the T-shirts (“1 Cross + 3 Nails = 4 Given”) sold at fundraisers.
The rest of the order is a Christopher Guest-esque gallery of weirdos, with each actor making the most of their screen time. Highlights of the ensemble include smooth-as-butter widower Andrew (Kadiff Kirwan), who everyone favours over David and who casually drops into conversation that he was selected for the Olympics but just chose not to compete; progressive Elder Abijah (Al Roberts), who once tried a can of Coke to bond with a potential convert and desperately longs to sip at its dark nectar once again; and miserable Elder Samson (Arsher Ali), who always interprets biblical passages stringently. (To his mind, adultery extends to lustful hand holding, and a steamy glance at a perfume ad is also a mortal sin.)
A young boy sketching his father being dissolved in a bath of acid, a drunk woman throwing up into cremated ashes, a religious zealot’s mind blown by ramen being both soup AND noodles : Everyone Else Burns keeps the laughs coming, often finding them in taboo subjects. The characters may be preoccupied with versions of hell, but watching them struggle while here on Earth is heavenly—and often really goddamn funny, pardon the blasphemy.
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