Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Avoidance’ On BritBox, Where A Man Who Avoids Confrontation Tries To Change Himself For His Son’s Sake

The Brits love their discomfort humor, don’t they? It’s not like cringey behavior by a sitcom’s main character is new in the UK, though the behavior has morphed from Basil Fawlty’s outlandishness to David Brent’s cluelessness. But none of those characters are defined by their fear of confrontation, as the main character is in a new BritBox series.

AVOIDANCE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A picture of a young boy and his parents; we pan over to see the boy sleeping in his room as his mother is in another room speaking loudly.

The Gist: Claire (Jessica Knappett) is speaking loudly because she’s telling her partner, Jonathan (Romesh Ranganathan), that it’s over between them. Jonathan, who avoids confrontation at all costs, thinks that they just need some space. But Claire is pretty definitive in saying it’s over. She even wants to tell their son Spencer (Kieran Logendra) immediately. But Jonathan wants to wait until he comes home from school to tell him.

At a coffee shop, Spencer points out that his dad never says anything when they get his breakfast order wrong. Again, Jonathan hates confrontation, so he just says everything’s fine. Every text from Claire telling him that it’s over and they need to tell Spencer that night just makes his ears ring.

When one of the mothers at drop off tells him that Claire called her about the split and she may have let it slip to her son, he imagines Spencer being called a loser in class because his parents broke up. He then calls his sister Danielle (Mandeep Dhillon), who already got the call from Claire; she knows that if Claire didn’t tell her, it would have taken Jonathan months to break the news, that’s how confrontation-shy he is. She offers him a place to stay, but her wife Courtney (Lisa McGrillis), no fan of Jonathan’s, keeps shaking her head “no”.

When he picks Spencer up, Spencer tells him he aced his spelling test and that one of the kids gave him a hug for no reason. When they get home and Jonathan gets a text from Claire saying she’ll be home in an hour, he hatches a plan: An overnight stay at Aunt Dan’s, and then playing hooky at the beach the next day.

When he shows up at Dan and Courtney’s house, of course Courtney isn’t happy; she thinks they’ll be there forever. Dan, for her part, makes sure her brother has told Claire where they are; he lies by assuring her he did. Claire is so desperate to get a text back from Jonathan, she calls Dan to find out where they are, which pisses off Dan.

The next day, knowing Claire is on the way over to have “the talk” with Spencer, he spirits his son away to the beach early in the morning. But when Spencer admits that he lied about his spelling test and thinks he should own up to it, Jonathan knows what he has to do.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Avoidance has the discomfort factor of some of the best British comedies of the past couple of decades, starting with Ricky Gervais’ The Office and Extras and going all the way through Martin Freeman being a cringeworthy dad on Breeders.

Our Take: Created by Ranganathan and Benjamin Green, Avoidance is a touching, funny picture of a man trying to make himself better for the sake of his son. We don’t know how much of Jonathan’s crippling fear of confrontation is part of Ranganathan’s personal history, but he and Green have created a character that we can all relate to on some level. We may not all be as beta as Jonathan is, but there are moments where we kick things and curse after a conflict happens, knowing we backed down and could have reacted in a much more forthright way. The only difference with Jonathan is that such avoidance rules his life, in confrontations large and tiny.

We don’t know a ton about Jonathan’s backstory, but in the second episode, where he blows off trying to get his job back to make sure Spencer shows well at a laser tag party for a popular kid, we know that he backed down a lot as a kid. We also know that Danielle, who has no problems with confrontation — especially when it comes to telling the flinty Courtney exactly how she feels — goes out of her way to protect him, even while she’s telling him just how much of a prat he’s being.

One of the other things we don’t know a ton about is how Jonathan and Claire got together and why she had enough of him. Yes, it could be because he’s so “difficult to live with,” as Dan tells him, but is it just his crippling fear of confrontation or something else? What we do know, through two episodes, is that Claire is done with him, full stop.

What we do know is that Jonathan’s fear that Spencer will become like him might outweigh his fear of confrontation. “He’s already got that same vacant stare of a rooftop sniper,” Courtney says of Spencer, comparing him to his father. It’s lines like that, ones that contrast with Jonathan’s constant discomfort and protective lying, that make the show funny. At some point, Jonathan needs to become more like his sister and her wife, if only because he needs to set a good example for his son.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first two episodes.

Parting Shot: Spencer tells his dad that he wants to go to school the next day. As they exit the boardwalk, Jonathan tells Spencer that his mother will come to visit them at Aunt Dan’s the next day. We presume at that point, Spencer got the bad news.

Sleeper Star: Kieran Logendra plays Spencer like the smart, shy kid he is. He’s smart but not a kid saying middle-aged dialogue. And he definitely seems to be more put together than his father is.

Most Pilot-y Line: Courtney, between projects as a graphic artist, figures she has time to cook, so she makes a lumpy pile of eggs for Danielle. The chewing and gagging the two of them do when they taste the supposed frittata Courtney made is probably a bit of a comedic overreaction.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Avoidance does a good job of showing just how socially crippled its main character is, but also makes sure that his affliction is shown in contrast to those that care for him the most.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.