It’s been a bumper year for XTV: hosting the NaSTAs, winning multiple awards and turning out some truly impressive work. Before it’s shown in full next week, I took some time out to watch Tom Bond’s darkly comic After Life – a tale of sex, death and spaghetti séances. 
The show is, roughly, an absurdist take on romance; less boy-meets-girl than manchild-meets-cynic. When overgrown perv Alex (played with panache by Jon Jones) is set up with Lucy (Lindsey Harris), he thinks he might just have found his perfect girl. That is, until he’s woken by a phone call telling him she’s been run over. How’s that for pillow talk?
But nevermind: being the emotional manchild he is, Alex soon recovers, and takes to stalking the local record shop in hopes of finding his next dream girl. When the shop owner (Lorna Miller) takes pity on our creep hero, Alex seems to have moved on for good.
But then Lucy miraculously reappears, and everything Alex thought he knew gets turned disastrously – and hilariously – on its head.
In a less astute director’s hands, After Life might have been too ridiculous a set-up. In practice, it’s a sharply executed, well-acted piece of black comedy, and a promising start to the new term.
You can watch After Life in full on Wednesday 2nd of October, 7-8.30pm in the M&D Room, Devonshire House, and catch episode one below:
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Jess O’Kane, Screen Editor
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