Britain has suffered through two world wars, several penalty shoot-out defeats to Germany and Mr Blobby going to number one – so perhaps it is no surprise its creative class has an ongoing interest in the downfall of civilisation.
That obsession has yielded consistently gripping results. Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later made Cillian Murphy a star. Shaun of the Dead gave us the zombie apocalypse as a boozy lads’ night out. PD James’s Children of Men, and Alfonso Cuarón’s subsequent movie adaptation, foreshadowed our current age of eco-anxiety and the sense that modernity is a lie we’ve all been told and is now turning to dust in our hands.
Caroline Moran’s Henpocalypse! (BBC Two, 10pm) is unlikely to be mistaken for a Cuarón masterpiece. It’s been a while, but I don’t recall Children Of Men featuring a scene in which the protagonists attack a piñata shaped like a male appendage. Or a sequence in which a stripper invites a hen party to sample a “penis-colada” alcoholic beverage.
Still, what Henpocalypse! lacks in grit and gloom, it more than makes up for with offbeat hilarity. The action opens with bride-to-be Zara (Kate O’Flynn) going on a bawdy trip to the Welsh countryside with her mother and pals. But as they’re busy chugging booze and dancing with the stripper who has called to their remote farmhouse, the world is falling victim to a lethal new virus: crab measles.
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At least, the men are. Crab measles hits the blokes where it hurts while seemingly leaving women unharmed. Six weeks later, Zara and company gave gone semi-feral in deepest Wales. The stripper has been tied to a radiator; he’s potentially the last man alive, so they don’t want him breaking free and catching crab measles.
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A reluctant stripper prisoner is the least of their worries. One of the gang has an awkward case of gangrene. And they’ve started to run low on chocolate penises – their staple diet for the previous month and a half. There’s nothing for it but visit the nearest town – even though they have a potential enemy out there in the form of the yoga mum whose car they rear-ended en route to their hen party. It’s Mad Max: Pilates Edition (look out, further in, for a Danny Dyer cameo).
The humour is broad. However, Moran – sister of journalist Caitlin Moran – has a talent for blending comedy and horror. Henpocalypse! is never scary, yet the first of six episodes communicates a crushing isolation as the women realise it’s just them against Armageddon.
Henpocalypse! is a brash, bawdy chortle-fest that possesses a sliver of ice in its soul. The end of the world is played for laughs – but it is clear throughout that Moran reserves the right to reduce her characters to tears and that when this happens, it will be all the more devastating.
