Big Mood S2 - PressPack

Introduction

It’s been nearly a year after the chaotic events of Series 1, and Eddie and Maggie haven’t spoken in all that time. As they re-enter each other’s lives, the series asks the question: can a friendship truly recover after a major falling out? 

Maggie is a year into her recovery from lithium poisoning, and doing very sensible, un-Maggie-like activities to keep herself “stable” – something she’s desperate to be perceived as. But that hard-won stability is about to be seriously tested by Eddie re-entering her life.

As someone who would do anything to avoid dealing with her own internal battles, Eddie has been attempting a healing journey of her own: she’s formed an intense friendship with Whitney, a spiritual influencer from California. Has she truly found inner peace? Is her head in the sand, or is it lodged firmly up a crystal healer?

This series finds the comedy in Maggie and Eddie both living in denial, papering over the cracks in their fragile friendship. 

Produced by Dancing Ledge Productions, a Fremantle company, Big Mood is written and created by Camilla Whitehill.

CAST CREDITS

MAGGIE – Nicola Coughlan
EDDIE – Lydia West
WHITNEY – Hannah Onslow
WILL – Robert Gilbert
KRENT – Eamon Farren
ANYA – Amalia Vitale
RYAN – Luke Fetherston 

GILLIAN – Niamh Cusack
OWEN – Stephen Sobal
VANESSA – Rebecca Lowman
CLARA – Kate Fleetwood
FLOPSY – Marina Bye
JACK PEARL – Zachary Hart 

SIR ALBERT – John Locke
TONI – Kyran Peet 
CHER – Marcus Collins 

RUPERT EVERETT – Rupert Everett 

ESMERALDA - Anna Francolini 

DOOR BITCH – Munroe Bergdorf

TJ - Leo Wan 

HOSTESS – Lois Chimimba
MAIREAD – Kelly Campbell
MAGGIE’S FATHER – Robert Lindsay

CREW CREDITS
CAMILLA WHITEHILL – Writer, Creator and Executive Producer
REBECCA ASHER – Director & Executive Producer
LOTTE BEASLEY MESTRINER – Executive Producer, Dancing Ledge Productions
LAURENCE BOWEN – Executive Producer, Dancing Ledge Productions
CHRIS CAREY – Executive Producer, Dancing Ledge Productions
NICOLA COUGHLAN – Executive Producer
LYDIA WEST – Executive Producer
NADIA JAYNES – Producer

SYNOPSES

EPISODE ONE (LEAGUES)

Having not seen each other for a year, Maggie and Eddie reunite as bridesmaids at a mutual friend’s wedding. Maggie is dead set on showing everyone how stable she is, only to be given a ‘junior bridesmaid’ status by the scary Maid of Honour. Eddie returns from LA intent on ending her relationship with Maggie for good. But before she can cut ties, she must reluctantly team up with Maggie to save the wedding from a very unwelcome guest. Maggie saves the day by pretending to have ‘an episode’, the exact opposite of what she wanted to do. At least she’s on good terms with Eddie, right? Wrong – Eddie has a new Maggie, and this one is a willowy Californian named Whitney. Maggie becomes determined to win Eddie back.

EPISODE TWO (FATHOMS)

Maggie and Eddie learn that their favourite drag act, Barbie & Skipper, are performing for one night only that evening, and tickets are like gay gold dust. Thus begins an odyssey across Queer London to try and get tickets, involving wigs, theatrical icons, lies, and a whole lot of drama. Maggie is desperate to remind Eddie how much fun they used to have in London, but Whitney is determined to keep Eddie on the objective of getting a job to keep funding their future plans. Who’s going to win Eddie’s affection? Maggie forms an uneasy alliance with Will to dig up more dirt on their common enemy.

EPISODE THREE (CUBITS)

With Whitney away on a ‘business trip,’ and the bar being reviewed by Time Out that evening, Eddie decides to work out whether cutting out Maggie for good is really the best idea. She leaves Krent to his own devices – never a good idea – while she invites Maggie over to spend the day with her. In her excitement to grab the olive branch, Maggie takes her drowsy night meds instead of her day meds, making the task of being there for Eddie infinitely more difficult. Things take a turn for the chaotic when Eddie gets a call from the bar, telling her that Krent has installed four working saunas in the bar and the staff are all overheating. An exhausted Maggie bends over backwards to help Eddie out of this mess, but Eddie’s zen seems to have got in the way of her compassion. Maggie manages to save the day and re-enter Eddie’s good books, but is shocked to learn that that Eddie and Whitney plan to move to Devon to start a commune together, taking her best friend away from London for good.  

EPISODE FOUR (HANDS)

After 2 years of not speaking, Maggie’s estranged father gets in touch out of the blue and invites her to lunch – at which, Maggie discovers he hadn’t actually noticed they were estranged. Eddie pressures Maggie to let Whitney use her famous dad in a ‘crystal healing workshop’ for clout so her followers on Instagram grow. It only goes downhill from there. Maggie’s stability is tested to the limit as things come to a head; her relationship with both Eddie and her father are in tatters. But has she accidentally learned how to be honest with the people she loves? She calls Will and agrees to help him take down Whitney once and for all.

EPISODE FIVE (FURLONGS)

It’s the day before Eddie and Whitney leave London for good to set up their commune in Devon, and it’s also Operation Save Eddie day. Maggie and the gang have set up a fake crystal conference, and Whitney thinks she’s the keynote speaker. An incredibly pregnant Anya whisks Whitney away for an ‘aura assessment’ but is actually trying to get the name of her childhood pet out of her so Will can break into her bank account and recover Eddie’s money. Meanwhile, Maggie uses her extensive brainwashing research based on a single Reddit post to the test and tries to deprogramme Eddie from the tiny cult she’s fallen into. In classic Maggie fashion she overdoes it; she manages to banish Whitney with proof that she’s a liar, but breaks Eddie in the process, and it’s too late to save the money. Knowing better than anyone how humiliating it is to be made to feel insane, Maggie takes Eddie to where it all began, her old bar, Wet Mouth.

EPISODE SIX (POPPYSEEDS)

Maggie tries to put a broken Eddie back together so they can get back to being besties, by reminding her of all the good times they’ve shared together. As the pair reminisce, we see flashbacks of the story of their friendship, going back to Eddie’s dad’s wake in 2010, the first day they met. We see how Maggie has always been there for Eddie to brighten her day, but also how she has a knack for ruining important moments for Eddie. We also see how much Eddie’s no bullshit approach has helped Maggie, but also how Eddie has consistently diminished Maggie’s mental health struggles. Maggie has managed to win her best friend back but is gobsmacked when Eddie reveals she knew that Maggie had lithium poisoning the day it happened and still didn’t say a word to her. Maggie’s already sacrificed so much to get Eddie back, but can she forgive this?

Having been on the funny and wild roller-coaster of their friendship across the series, we leave the episode on a cliffhanger: it’s clear to the audience by the end of the episode that they’re perhaps not good for each other – but is it clear to Eddie and Maggie?