Leigh hates it when people use the word 'condolences'. She also hates how, in the beginning, "everyone wants to send you flowers or donate to a foundation for your dead person, and they stop calling and writing and doing nice things for you because they’re over it and they expect you to be over it". Leigh is recently widowed and the rippling effect of her husband’s passing is the focus of Facebook Watch’s new drama series, Sorry For Your Loss.
You read correctly, it airs on Facebook. Though the social media platform certainly isn’t short of video content or new programming, a gem has emerged as an impressive contender in the competitive TV stakes. As in, you’re going to want to make room in your weekly viewing schedule because this show is good. Very good.
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Starring Elizabeth Olsen as Leigh, a young widow who moves home to live with her ferociously compassionate mother Amy (Janet McTeer) and well-meaning younger sister Jules (Kelly Marie Tran), Sorry For Your Loss deep dives into the ever-complicated waters of grief. It sounds heavy and yes, the corners of your eyes will prickle in scenes where Leigh’s heartache is left there, raw and unforgiving, for you to try and make sense of. But there’s relief in the pace of the narrative. There’s also an undercurrent of reluctant wit and intelligent sarcasm which makes the story and its characters just that bit more endearing in the context of a show that’s essentially about dealing with death.
Rest assured in the knowledge that fans of This Is Us will feel right at home here. We're not told how Leigh's husband Matt (Mamoudou Athie) died. Instead, each 30-minute episode Leigh spends muddling through this new life without him is peppered with flashbacks to various points in their relationship, leaving us to piece the mystery together. No good television drama is without, well, drama. So it's not all that surprising when a key part of the plot shifts towards the untold secrets held in Matt's phone; a phone that Leigh obviously doesn't know the passcode to but, even months after Matt's death (where the series picks up), buzzes with calls and texts from a blocked number.
"You think you knew him, but you really didn't know him as well as you thought," says Matt's difficult younger brother, Danny. He and Leigh don't get on and his apparent knowledge of a side to her husband that she wasn't acquainted with does nothing for their strained relationship. You'd be forgiven for assuming that their shared grief would bring them closer together, but Leigh isn't here for that. She's not here for anyone's pity, sympathy seems to physically grate on her and the only conviction she does have is that no one else could possibly understand what she's going through.
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But it's hard, isn't it? Hard to define where one person's pain ends and the other's starts with something as emotionally complex and nuanced as death, despite its inevitability. However, what Sorry For Your Loss explores particularly well is that awkward thing of ownership in this scenario. When we're sad, it's easy to fall into the trap of believing that no one else's sorrow can possibly match our specific brand of despair. Through Leigh, we're reminded that loss always feels desperately personal, but regardless of whether or not it makes the grief easier to manage, the loss of a loved one affects everyone who loved them in pointedly different ways.
Death makes you question things, especially, as in Leigh's case, when someone's passing exposes unanswered questions that are poised to niggle at everything you thought you knew before. So those questions niggle at us in the audience too, and our frustration builds alongside Leigh's each time she incorrectly guesses Matt's passcode and gets locked out of his phone. Facebook being Facebook has used the platform to cater to our curiosities, though. To keep you going between weekly episodes are two subsidiary video series – Matt's iPhone and Matt's Comics – where past conversations, thoughts and scenarios are played out through his eyes instead of Leigh's. If you don't think you'll be sucked into their world, allow me to tell you that you're very, very wrong. Just enough of it is there to scroll through, willing you to invest.
With the air of someone who keeps the words "fuck you" on the tip of her tongue, ready to spit at anyone who dares forget that her husband died and things are actually super hard for her, you'll be as drawn to Leigh as you are distanced every time she consciously pushes everyone away. But that's the beauty of this particular story. It has you invested in the slow unravelling of a multifaceted plot without masquerading the "grieving widow" persona we're normally given in TV. It's as difficult and emotional as it's meant to be, and giving it a watch just might open your eyes to the raw reality of grief (through the lens of hyperbolic secrets, whispers of well-placed comic relief and the popular time-jump narrative of 2018's entertainment roster, of course) that isn't often seen elsewhere.
If you or someone you know is struggling to cope with grief, contact the bereavement charity Cruse online or over the phone on 0808 808 1677. You can also contact Let's Talk about Loss, a support network for young people, via email at hello@letstalkaboutloss.org.