TV Review: Laura Linney Faces Down End-Stage Cancer in ‘The Big C’

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CHICAGO – What would you do if you just didn’t give a crap anymore? This question seems to be the theme of Showtime’s new series “The Big C,” starring Laura Linney, Oliver Platt, and recent Oscar nominee Gabourey Sidibe. It is not about the sad journey or the emotional distance of a woman diagnosed with end-stage melanoma, or about the tragedy of her procrastination breaking the news to her family and friends. It is about the chance to live vicariously through a woman who is not able to be truly honest until the end is in sight.

Television Rating: 4.0/5.0

If you had nothing left to lose, you probably wouldn’t buy gigantic luggage and go to a desert island like Tom Hanks in “Joe Versus the Volcano,” or fly to a five-star Swiss resort to shop yourself to death like Queen Latifah in the lackluster “Last Holiday.” But you might make smaller, more mundane changes that you’d secretly always wanted to enact but had never had the guts. You might kick your annoying husband to the curb; get tough with a pool subcontractor pushing you around;ask blunt, inappropriate questions of your cute, younger oncologist; and stop working hard at your dead-end job.

The Big C
Photo credit: Ken Regan/Showtime

At least, if you did these things, your life would be as satisfying and relatable as Showtime’s “The Big C.” It’s made even more watchable by the engrossing Laura Linney. Though the Tony-nominated actress’s theatrical background makes her too expressive and dramatic for the small screen at times, especially in more emotional scenes, she is absolutely charismatic.

The Big C Photo credit: Showtime

Linney is practically licking her lips she so clearly relishes playing the role of Cathy, the doomed Minneapolis housewife and high school teacher who has nothing left to lose. It doesn’t hurt that she gets to deliver some of the best lines in the premiere episode. (When confronting her underachieving summer school class she tells them: “Have you seen “The Patriot?” Its depiction is 20% true at best, but if you believe it to be truth you still understand this time in history better than 90% of Americans. And Mel Gibson is medium-good… Enjoy.”)

Cathy’s husband Paul is played with gusto by Oliver Platt, who is as strangely appealing, if decidedly odd, as ever. (The couple’s mismatch in terms of physical beauty seems strange but Paul does make mention of the inequality in a later episode.) Guest star Gabourey Sidibe is a compelling adversary for Cathy as the caustic, obese student who she decides to take under her wing and goad into losing weight.

“The Big C” would not be nearly so appealing if it was about a previously perfect woman whose intact life is now tarnished by her death sentence. Instead, the repressed, people-pleaser Cathy has hasn’t been honest in years, it seems, and in finding the ability to be honest, she is finally discovering herself. And her journey to self-discovery is defiantly, deeply addictive.

By EMILY RIEMER TV Critic HollywoodChicago.com emily@hollywoodchicago.com