“That was the beginning of probably one of the most important friendships of my life.” (Sample lyric: “Why you gotta play that song so loud? / Because we want to! Because we want to!”) In the early aughts, Piper developed a following on television as Rose, the plucky sidekick on “Doctor Who,” and then as a high-end sex worker in “Secret Diary of a Call Girl.” Prebble, who wrote “I Hate Suzie,” is also a writer and co-executive producer on “Succession.” When she was in her twenties, she wrote the script for “Secret Diary.” “The best thing about that show was meeting Billie,” she told me recently. In Britain, Piper is a household name, having achieved fame early, at fifteen, as a pop star, when her 1998 single “Because We Want To” débuted at No. Her husband, a university lecturer and expert mansplainer, played with bitter condescension by Daniel Ings, immediately changes the locks. Nudity might not be so bad, but the pictures also reveal an affair. Suzie’s breakdown is triggered when her phone is hacked and compromising photos are leaked to the press. in August to jubilant reviews (“Piper is nude, lewd, and joyously off the rails,” the Guardian wrote), and arrived on HBO Max on November 19th.
MY SECRET IDENTITY THEME SONG SERIES
“I Hate Suzie” follows the unravelling of its main character’s life in eight sharply drawn episodes, each named, more or less, after a stage of grief: “Shock,” “Denial,” “Fear,” “Shame,” “Bargaining,” “Guilt,” “Anger,” and “Acceptance.” The series premièred in the U.K. It’s exactly what having a crackup feels like.
“I miss the smog and the rising crime!” She does a dainty little twirl. “I hate seeing the stars at night,” she sings. Suddenly, she breaks into song her voice is startlingly light and sweet. I hate this fucking place.” She passes a church (“I hate the church”), and a pub (“I hate the pub”). “Have you got a charger, mate?” she asks a passerby, who quickly looks away. I just need a charger,” she says to herself.
(The shoot is promotional there’s a Cruella De Vil connection.) Suzie’s lipstick is smeared, and her mascara has formed rings around her eyes, which dart from side to side, furtively. She has just finished a chaotic photo shoot at her home, nearby, and is wearing a black-and-white fur coat splashed with fake blood. At the end of the first episode, Piper, playing an actress named Suzie Pickles, careens down the high street of a bucolic English village. Lately, when I’m having a particularly bad day, I think about a scene from “I Hate Suzie,” an ingenious new show from Lucy Prebble and Billie Piper.