Life Is Easy: Freaky Friday Premise Gets Daring New Spin in Brash Kiwi Series
By Thom Ernst
Rating: B-
A couple of decades back, North America adopted a UK series called Queer As Folk.
It was ground-breaking in that television had never fully committed to a show driven entirely by gay characters. It even got a bit cheeky by shattering the glass wall between straight and gay romance sprinkled with moments of nudity (mostly male backsides) and uninhibited scenes of affection and sexual encounters.
It all seemed—and it was—progressive for the times. There have been, to varying degrees, similar shows since. But now there is Life is Easy, a new series import from New Zealand from actor/writers Cole Jenkins and Chye-Ling Huang.
Life is Easy moves another step towards themes of gender diversity and fluidity in what is perhaps the most direct manner a television comedy series has yet to attempt. By comparison, Life is Easy makes Queer As Folk play like a progressive episode of Friends.
Life is Easy is a high-concept comedy series involving two friends: a straight Chinese/Kiwi female and a gay/white/male who switch bodies. It’s a gender-swap variation on Freaky Friday—and to hammer that allusion home, the writers name their characters Jaimie-Li (Jenkins) and Curtis (Huang). (Subtlety is not one of the show’s strongest features).
But don’t expect the same kind of family-friendly tone. Life is Easy is an adult comedy—of sorts. While the series successfully challenges the barriers and perceived norms of society, it can also be self-sabotaging using crude humour that lingers long after the joke is over and perpetrating a few questionable stereotypes.
Life is Easy exists in a realm of fantasy that pushes the conversation of gender fluidity, sexual politics, and cultural appropriation into areas that are bound to make some folks laugh, and others uncomfortable—the kind of discomfort that’s good for the soul.
Jenkins and Huang use the body-swap gimmick to reveal some important issues about the gay and binary community that, were it not for its frank and honest portrayals, could be a valuable tool for families wanting to encourage a wider understanding of sexual diversity.
The series can be bitingly satiric and doesn’t flinch or apologize for celebrating (by way of depiction) gay, binary, and other lifestyles. But these powerful themes collide clumsily into areas of overt silliness.
The series takes a few episodes to warm up to the characters, in part because Jenkins and Huang sometimes overplay their roles. A scene between the friends reveling in a drug-induced euphoria (not for kids) is overwrought to the point of parody rather than comedy.
In time, however, the actors settle more comfortably in their characters and the story takes on a trajectory that is not just a series of episodic mishaps. The series doesn’t find its voice until the third or fourth episode; it grows more interesting and credible the further along you go, and the more the characters learn how to navigate their new reality.
There is a lot of promise in the first season of Life is Easy, enough to make you hope for a second.
Life is Easy. Created by Cole Jenkins and Chye-Ling Huang. Starring Cole Jenkins and Chy-Ling Huang. Premieres July 19 on Revry.