Channel 4’s Pure, a comedy about OCD, is pure dead brilliant
At the end of Pure, and indeed for much of the series, I was in floods of tears. This could be a result of lockdown getting to me, or the fact that this Channel 4 mini-series (made available recently on Netflix) is so unflinchingly honest and difficult to watch that it feels like a scalding emotional bath. You emerge far rawer than you anticipated.
Pure is about Marnie, a 24-year-old who has left her Scottish village to “find herself” in London. What follows is a typical 20-something triumvirate of awful internships, flat-mate fall-outs, and plenty of dates. But, amid zingy millennial-baiting lines such as “I slept with a barista, and now I’m one – it’s like a hipster STD”, is the programme’s eponymous focus: Marnie has Pure O. Pure O is a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder which manifests itself as repeated intrusive thoughts that the sufferer cannot control. For Marnie, these thoughts are sexual: a simple tube journey becomes a panic-attack inducing orgy in her mind. It is her OCD which forced her to leave Scotland – at a family party thoughts of incest rendered her silent and immobile mid-speech. And it is in London where she receives a diagnosis, makes new friends, and begins – tentatively – to learn to cope with her thoughts.
Charly Clive, as Marnie, is outstanding in the role. Her voiced-over thoughts are often momentarily indistinguishable from the dialogue surrounding her. For a split-second the whole scene is filtered through her consciousness, an effect that is heightened by the regular graphic visualisations of Marnie’s intrusive thoughts.
Marnie meets Charlie in an early attempt at sex-addict group therapy (before quickly realising she is not, in fact, a sex addict and can think of nothing worse than acting on her compulsions). Charlie – played by Joe Cole who is currently starring in Sky’s hit drama Gangs of London – is a sex addict, and his attempts at love, porn sobriety, and a corporate job are a parallel to Marnie’s struggles. As both of them strive for some sense of normality – and alternate between leaning on one another and fighting with each other – they live typical young-London lives: there are scenes of Hackney, Vauxhall, and Tottenham, and awful house-parties, awkward dinners, and heart-breaking realisations that some friends are not as friendly as they might seem.
And so, in many ways, Pure is not actually about OCD; it’s about a young woman experiencing the highs and lows of living away from home for the first time, who also happens to have OCD. It is this plurality of focus that makes it so effective. The series brilliantly satirises media start-ups, alongside exploring the perils and delights of female friendship, with examinations of alcohol dependence and dry corporate jobs thrown in for good measure. Each of the characters – whether they have a mental health problem or not – is treated sensitively and believably.
This is not to say that Marnie does not experience cruel behaviour and stigma as a result of her disorder – rather the opposite; one of her friends behaves appallingly, and the others struggle to do what is “right” in the face of something so unknown and unavoidably uncomfortable. But, there is an overwhelming sense of compassion. There is no way that a viewer or friend without Pure O could understand the horror of the condition fully, but Pure goes a long way to explore the depths of this unknowing. Marnie’s new-found friends cannot understand her struggles, and nor does she want them to – for much of the series, she does not reveal her condition. Neither can anyone sob-watching on Netflix, but the very act of depicting it goes some way towards provoking a more understanding response.
Pure is not a simple trajectory of growth and recovery – the series vacillates between despair and delight as unpredictably as some of the relationships within it. Its end note is not one of untainted happiness, but it is one of tender hope.