ICYMI: Siblings Is the British It’s Always Sunny You Didn’t Know You Needed (But You Do)

What exactly makes a foreign television show (those that are not created as international co-productions, anyway) a hit in the United States? Is it just a sweet American distribution deal or is it more about intense word of mouth? Is it honestly just luck? I’ve wondered before in this very column why Black Mirror became such a hit in the States while its contemporary Inside No. 9 still hasn’t. In that particular case, it really did boil down to a combination of distribution (exclusively to Netflix, becoming one with that brand versus a cocktail of inconsistent, in terms of season availability, streaming and buy options on more than one platform available to Americans) and word of mouth (which Black Mirror had from the start, while Inside No. 9, for whatever reason, did not). It’s also arguably the reason the delightful Lovesick—formerly known as the less tonally appropriate but still content-appropriate Scrotal Recall—lasted as long as it did.

All of this is to say: It’s now been over three years since it last aired, but to this day I regularly question how and why the British sitcom Siblings didn’t become even somewhat of a minor cult hit in the States, both through that combination of word of mouth and a convenient streaming service (in this case Hulu, though it was never branded as a “Hulu original,” which made a world of difference). You know that Semisonic song from 10 Things I Hate About You, “F.N.T.”? Specifically the lyrics, “I’m surprised that you’ve never been told before/That you’re lovely and you’re perfect/And that somebody wants you”? Those lyrics don’t just work to create a memorable scene with Julia Stiles, Heath Ledger, and paintballs: They also describe exactly how I feel about Siblings and have since the first moment I saw it in 2014.

Created and written by Fresh Meat writer Keith Akushie, Siblings starred Charlotte Ritchie (also coming straight off of Fresh Meat’s four-season run at the time) and Tom Stourton as Hannah and Dan French, the series’ titular siblings. Described as a “sitcom about the world’s worst brother and sister,” for the two six-episode seasons that it ran, in its simplest form, Siblings was essentially a British version of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, only one that chose to focus on just Dee and Dennis’ toxic sibling relationship (and toxic relationships with others) instead of the entire gang’s brand of dysfunction. The Sunny comparisons were ingrained in Siblings, as the series—which debuted in 2014 and ended in 2016—even went with the Sunny approach to musical contrast in the face of terrible people doing terrible things, with the combination of its cheery, atonal opening title theme music and episodic score. But unlike Sunny, Siblings’ Dee (Hannah) had more of the sociopathy of Dennis going for her, while its Dennis (Dan) had the questionable mental capabilities of Charlie. (The series confirmed on more than one occasion that there’s technically nothing wrong with Dan. He’s just extremely dumb. And accident-prone. And, when the series begins, has been recently released from a months-long prison stint for an undisclosed non-violent crime. At best, he’s child-like. At worst, he’s a man-child who’s a danger to himself and others.)

While Sunny has become more of an intense satire as it’s progressed, Siblings’ short time on the air didn’t allow for much of that, if that was ever really a place it wanted to go. While there was certainly minor satire—as the titular siblings were upper-middle-class, posh-adjacent brats, which put everything about these characters into focus once that was revealed, like how Dan has money without a job—Keith Akushie’s series was ultimately more concerned with seeing just how far it could push the envelope with its characters and its scenarios. Unlike Sunny, it was satisfied with being unencumbered by a point or a message, because all it needed was to let the audience witness every awful thing Hannah and Dan did. Then we watch in glee—and a little terror—as it all came back around on them, after they’ve warped what was supposed to be a good thing into something awful. In Season One’s “Intern School,” Dan’s decision to be an inspiration to the modern-day nerds at his former primary school—based on his own grade school bullying “just because [he] was different”—reveals how he ruined another kid’s life during the self-proclaimed best years of his life. In Season Two’s “Kevin Rugby,” Hannah somehow warps a doctor’s diagnosis that she is severely unhealthy into a bizarre lesbian love triangle. My favorite episode, Season One’s “Burrito Neighbour,” is a tour de force when it comes to witnessing Siblings’ particular brand of destruction: Hannah somehow goes from obsessing over a Swedish crime drama to throwing her born-again Christian boyfriend off the wagon, with Dan becoming a “shit Mr. Ripley” in 10 days, when all he was asked to do is look after a neighbor’s pet fish.

One of the keys to Siblings was the fact that, despite both being self-involved, self-absorbed characters—at one point in the series, Hannah has a botched move to the States for her dream job and, despite having told Dan she was leaving for good, he’d thought she was only on a temporary trip—the way Hannah and Dan project those personality traits are completely different. Dan lacks the malice Hannah has, but both characters are different sides of the same self-absorbed coin. As the series progressed, you saw that Hannah was the product of their parents in terms of their personality and actions, while Dan was the product based on their nurture, or lack thereof: the combination of their mother’s coddling and their father’s disappointment. The world revolves around the French siblings, and it’s a fascinating—occasionally terrifying—perspective. It’s the type of perspective that should have led to thinkpieces on Hannah and “Are you a Dan or are you a Hannah?” Buzzfeed quizzes. (And not just because most people who think they’re Hannahs are actually Kevins, Hannah’s long-suffering co-worker whose life only gets worse once Dan decides to involve himself in it.) Hannah is a vengeful obsessive who can never just let things go—a trait that even Dan realizes is both troubling and annoying—while, at the same time, the kind of insecure person who tried to confidently call herself “Momma” in conversations, only to backtrack and explain that she is, in fact, “Momma.” Dan, on the other hand, is the type who falls in love with every new woman he meets, and does every dare his posh bro friends tell him to, just because it “would be weird.”