Boy meets girl. Girl acts weird and runs away as sunset approaches. Girl turns out to be a werewolf. Yes, this might seem like your average love story but Wolf Like Me is anything but.
The story is an intriguing exploration into the ways people deal with grief and the human need to feel safe enough to be vulnerable with somebody. Our hero Gary (Josh Gad) has spent years not knowing how to deal with the death of his wife, forcing himself to appear happy for his now 11-year-old daughter but failing miserably. Daughter Emma (Ariel Donoghue) has severe mental health problems and a therapist who’s all wrong for her. And Mary (Isla Fisher), well, she’s battling her own demons, too.
So when Mary crashes into Gary and Emma, these three lives are thrown together in a way that feels so desperately necessary for all of them – apart from the small matter of what happens to Mary every full moon. And just when you think you know where this strange premise is going to take you, it still manages to throw in a few surprises. And after five episodes of tight, punchy, compelling story, the show ends in a truly tense and brilliant finale.
Wolf Like Me is right up there with the likes of Russian Doll for just smart and fun storytelling that brings the surreal into the very real. It packs in the humour without trivialising the human pain and drama of it all. Is it a bit silly? Sure. But it’s also superbly plotted and performed and shot – and the characters are all brilliantly realised, with their own motivations and layers of pain and loneliness. It’s a small and intimate show, with very few characters so it can really focus on the ones we have. Their triumphs are our triumphs. Their pain is our pain.
Throw in a lot of Queens of the Stone Age and a beautiful Australian backdrop and you’ve got yourself a winner.
Wolf Like Me series one is now streaming on Prime Video.
