Lizzie Davidson makes Billie in Such Brave Girls funny without making her nicer. We rate the sharp timing and the convincing awkwardness between the sisters, though the programme sometimes asks us to endure more selfishness than we need.
Fi1m perspective
Billie wants attention, and Lizzie Davidson makes that appetite look entirely ordinary in Such Brave Girls (2023). Her natural delivery suits the bathroom plotting: the scheming has the casualness of a familiar household task. Alongside Kat Sadler as Josie and Louise Brealey as their mother, Deb, she helps make a family whose selfishness takes three different forms. We recommend the first series warmly, with a warning that spending this much time among people so absorbed in themselves can become tiring.
Davidson came to that breakthrough role after roughly five years in immersive theatre attractions, including Shrek's Adventure and the London Dungeon Experience. That work offers a useful context for the directness of Billie, though there is little sense of an actor straining to get a laugh. She delivers a line as though Billie has only just thought of it. Guest appearances in Mitchell & Webb Are Not Helping (2025) and Death in Paradise (2026) widen the list of credits, but Billie remains the substantial evidence for our view.
The crucial collaborator is Sadler, the programme's writer as well as Davidson's fellow performer. Under director Simon Bird, the two make the sisters' familiarity convincing enough for an insult to leave some embarrassment behind it. Their scenes do not need a separate declaration that these women belong to the same family. We felt unexpectedly fond of Billie as the first series let more affection into the sisters' scenes, because Davidson kept her awkwardness intact.
There is a limit to the pleasure of watching everyone protect their own importance, and the programme occasionally reaches it. At those points, asking Davidson to make Billie nicer would sacrifice a good part of what makes her funny. Her timing keeps the exchanges lively, while the chemistry with Sadler gives their self-inflicted difficulties enough weight to matter beyond the next punchline. Start with Such Brave Girls and watch how much she and Sadler can establish before anyone attempts to be kind.
Biography
Lizzie Davidson is a British actor. She is known for playing Billie Johnson in the BBC sitcom Such Brave Girls (2023–), created by and co-starring her sister Kat Sadler. She has also appeared as Stacey Wright in Death in Paradise (2011) and in Mitchell & Webb Are Not Helping (2025).
Davidson attended Hurtwood House, where she studied Theatre, Media and English. After leaving school she worked for five years at Shrek’s Adventure and the London Dungeon Experience before entering television. Such Brave Girls, in which she plays the younger sister to Sadler’s character, won the BAFTA for Best Scripted Comedy.
