Critic Reviews

Even when it meanders—perhaps especially so—the show is overflowing with it. It’s also funny, weird, and foul-mouthed, but more than anything it quietly makes you care fully about these characters and this quirky little world as it fans out to explore all of their individual stories.

The London-based actress and comedian—and the creator, writer and star of this six-episode import—[Sarah Kendall] is the principal reason to watch the series, which weighs in at three parts comedy, one part domestic drama. She can be both witheringly dry and vulnerable, often at the same time. ... She puts enough perverse tweaks on potentially saccharine conventions that the viewer will remain delightfully off-balance. Perhaps even delighted. Sometimes appalled.

Frayed tells a funny and hopefully heartwarming story about a woman who has to re-adapt to the place she fled decades ago, and how her pasty and awkward kids might flourish there. It’s not a new concept, but it works here.

It’s a sweet, beautifully acted, and sometimes raunchy family dramedy.

Hopscotching across time zones, Frayed could have easily been unsatisfyingly muddled, but the humour had a wonderfully wry quality and Kendall excelled as a super-stressed woman trying to keep it together.

There’s an element in this season of “Frayed” getting all its pieces in place. The closing moments of the finale feel like both the logical culmination of episodes’ worth of careful buildup and a gateway to an exciting chapter if the story continues. If it follows the steady path it’s already plotted out, “Frayed” has all the makings of something really special.

The comedic rhythm of the show is strong even when the overall structure sags. But Frayed is middling a lot of the time, especially when it comes to its emotional stakes and the more dramatic tensions that surface and then quickly flatten into an easy joke.

The first episode was unquestionably a slow burner. Sammy herself is as yet an uncharismatic central figure, and the liveliest characters so far have hardly even amounted to cameo performances. ... The undercurrents of unresolved rage and shame between mother and daughter tug at the attention. Not quite bonzer then, but no dag either.