---
title: "This Country"
year: 2017
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/this-country"
fi1m_score: 86
critics_score: 89
critics_reviews: 7
published: "2026-09-17T14:45:25.547061+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-17T14:45:40.235205+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# This Country (2017)

Created by Daisy May Cooper, Charlie Cooper · 30m · Comedy

**Fi1m score: 86** · Critics 89 from 7 reviews

*In a sentence:* Two cousins with nothing to do and a documentary crew to do it in front of

> Daisy May Cooper and Charlie Cooper’s mockumentary about two bored cousins in a Cotswolds village is funny, exactly observed and kinder than its format usually allows. The camera grammar is borrowed from *The Office*; the people are not. The third series repeats itself a little.

## Synopsis

A documentary crew arrives in a village in the Cotswolds to film young people in rural England with nothing to do, and finds two of them. Kerry Mucklowe (Daisy May Cooper) considers herself the most feared person in the village and lies about it constantly. Her cousin Lee, known to everyone as Kurtan (Charlie Cooper), knows the bus timetable by heart and has strong views on the scarecrow festival. Kerry’s mother Sue (Ivy Woodcock) shouts from upstairs. The vicar, Reverend Francis Seaton (Paul Chahidi), has taken the cousins on as a project and tries to find them something to do. Kerry’s father Martin (Paul Cooper) lives elsewhere and says he will visit. Nobody has a job.

## Review

*This Country* pretends to be a documentary. A television crew has come to a village in the Cotswolds to film young people in rural England with nothing to do, and has found two of them: Kerry Mucklowe and her cousin Kurtan, played by Daisy May Cooper and Charlie Cooper, who also created and wrote the thing. Each episode runs half an hour. Almost nothing happens in any of them, and the cousins treat each of those nothings as a matter of honour.

Our verdict is straightforward. It is one of the best British comedies we know, and the best comedy of embarrassment since *The Office*, whose format it has borrowed wholesale. It is also a good deal kinder than that comparison suggests. The Coopers, who are brother and sister, like the people they have invented, and they like the village, and the jokes come from knowing both far too well.

Daisy May Cooper plays Kerry as a woman who has decided she is the hardest person for miles and is checking constantly that everyone agrees. She lies in a flat voice and does not blink. Charlie Cooper’s Kurtan is smaller and fussier, a man who knows the bus timetable and treats the correct loading of the recycling as law. They talk over each other, correct each other, and turn to the camera to explain, quite calmly, why the other one is an idiot. There is a villager called Big Mandy whom we hear a great deal about and whom both of them are frightened of, and the fear is one of the running jokes of the first series.

The supporting cast is small and used well. Paul Chahidi plays Reverend Francis Seaton, the vicar who has made the cousins his project, with patience running out at a measured rate. The joke is never that he is a fool. He is decent, and the cousins mistake decency for weakness and take advantage of it, and he lets them, up to a point. Ivy Woodcock’s Sue, Kerry’s mother, is heard more than seen. Trevor Cooper’s Len Clifton, an older villager, gives as good as he gets.

Then there is Martin Mucklowe, Kerry’s father, played by Paul Cooper. He lives elsewhere. He says he will come and see her. We laughed at Kerry explaining to the camera why he is late, and then Daisy May Cooper held her face a second past the line and we stopped laughing altogether. The series does this often: it lets a joke run until you can see what is underneath it. Kurtan, watching from the doorway, says nothing, which for him is unusual.

Tom George directs in the plain style the form demands. The interviews are shot from a fixed camera in front rooms with the curtains half drawn; the rest is handheld, a step behind, so the crew is always slightly late to whatever the cousins have just done. He holds shots after the line has landed and lets the silence do the work. The village is shot in flat daylight, and the soundtrack is mostly a lawnmower somewhere and a car going past. Simon Mayhew-Archer produces.

The faults are real and they matter over eighteen episodes. Anyone who has seen *The Office* knows the grammar here: the glance to camera, the pause, the man who thinks he is in charge. The Coopers do nothing new with the camera; what is new is the place and the people in it. There is a streak of sentiment, mostly around Kerry and her father, that the writing occasionally reaches for rather than earns. And by the third series, six episodes from February 2020, the shape of an episode is familiar: a scheme, a humiliation, a scene on a bench where somebody almost says the true thing. The village outside the two of them is thinly peopled, the same half-dozen faces in every crowd. None of this ruins an episode. It makes the third series a small step down from the first two.

British comedy has a long line of people who cannot see themselves, and this one is unusual in wanting them to be all right. Start at the beginning, with the first series from February 2017, and give it two episodes; if the argument about the scarecrow festival does not make you laugh, nothing later will. It carries a 12A certificate, which undersells the swearing slightly.

*Fi1m score 86, published 17 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

The reviews are uniformly positive, and unusually so for a comedy that started life as a low-key mockumentary. Most critics praise the writing first: the boredom and small humiliations of village life are observed closely and, they agree, with affection rather than contempt. The Coopers’ performances as the cousins Kerry and Kurtan are singled out repeatedly, both for the deadpan idiocy and for the tenderness underneath it, particularly Kerry’s longing to be close to her father. Several reviewers admit to crying.

The spread is narrow. What reservations there are amount to footnotes: The Times notes an obvious debt to The Office and a streak of sentimentality, and the Evening Standard, the coolest of the seven, values it mainly as a comedy of the silent squirm. The Independent reads the second series as an allegory for Brexit Britain, a political weight the others do not put on it.

### Reviews we read (7)

- **The i Paper**, Sarah Carson (★★★★★): The review calls the special superb, poetic, hysterically funny and almost too tender to bear, singling out its ability to reference disparate topics yet still make the viewer cry through reckoning with loss. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/this-country-the-aftermath-review-bbc-three-kerry-kurtan-207467)
- **The Telegraph**, Anita Singh (5/5): The review praises the special as a quietly powerful, deadpan comic masterpiece with genuine heart, singling out its warm affection for characters and touching on rural poverty and mental health. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2018/10/10/country-aftermath-review-solovingly-crafted-wont-regret-joining/)
- **Radio Times**, Alison Graham (90/100, inferred): The critic loves this faux fly-on-the-wall mockumentary about bored, self-pitying cousins Kerry and Kurtan in a Cotswolds village, calling it a gem that is silly, funny, poignant and warm-hearted. [Read](https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/comedy/this-country-bbc3s-offbeat-mockumentary-about-rural-living-is-a-gem/)
- **The Guardian** (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the series a terrific achievement and perfectly observed comedy of desperation that rings true in a horrifying way for anyone who grew up in a small village or town. They single out its accurate portrayal of boredom, oddballs, and rural disenfranchisement, drawn with affection rather than nastiness. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/feb/22/this-country-bbc-perfect-horrifying-tv-for-anyone-who-grew-up-in-a-village)
- **The Independent** (85/100, inferred): The review calls the second series a deserved return and a painfully brilliant allegory for Brexit Britain, singling out the dollops of bathos, poignancy and profanity that made it the comedy hit of the previous year. [Read](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/tv-review-comedy-this-country-brexit-britain-cotswolds-a8236741.html)
- **The Times**, Hugo Rifkind (80/100, inferred): The review finds the series sweet and edgy, with obvious debt to The Office but a streak of sentimentality, singling out the heartbreaking desire of Kerry to be close to her father and Kurtan's protectiveness. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/tv-review-hugo-rifkind-on-this-country-humanity-and-pilgrimage-06jm2tkqh)
- **Evening Standard**, Alastair McKay (75/100, inferred): The review describes the special as a clever mockumentary about modern manners that is unbeatable as a comedy of the silent squirm, singling out the Coopers' skill at acting like idiots in the Laurel and Hardy vein. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/tvfilm/this-country-the-aftermath-village-idiots-the-reality-show-a-clever-mockumentary-about-modern-manners-a3960771.html)

## Details

- **Created by:** Daisy May Cooper, Charlie Cooper
- **Creator:** Daisy May Cooper, Charlie Cooper
- **Director:** Tom George
- **Writer:** Daisy May Cooper, Charlie Cooper
- **Producer:** Simon Mayhew-Archer
- **Cast:** Daisy May Cooper as Kerry Mucklowe; Charlie Cooper as Lee 'Kurtan' Mucklowe; Paul Chahidi as Reverend Francis Seaton; Ivy Woodcock as Sue Mucklowe; Paul Cooper as Martin Mucklowe; Trevor Cooper as Len Clifton; Eliza Hunt as June Winwood; Camilla Bates as Young Mum
- **Runtime:** 30m
- **Release (the US):** 8 February 2017
- **Genres:** Comedy
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BQdzS3e_z0

## Where to watch in the US

Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check.

Also available in: AT, AU, CA, GB. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *The Office* (2001): The format this borrows, done first and with a nastier man at the desk.
- *Detectorists* (2014), Fi1m 87: Two men, a field and a great deal of quiet; rural England, gentler still. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/detectorists.md)
- *Summer Heights High* (2007): Chris Lilley’s Australian school mockumentary, crueller and just as exactly observed.
- *Waiting for Guffman* (1996): Christopher Guest’s small-town amateur theatricals; the American cousin of this village.
- *People Just Do Nothing* (2014): A Brentford pirate radio station, filmed with the same patience for people going nowhere.

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/tv/this-country