Series 2 of Michaela Coel’s hit comedy show Chewing Gum returns this Thursday, Jan. 12th; the first episode is entitled “WTF Happened?”, which is just what viewers are thinking. We left off with 24-year-old Tracey Gordon moving out of her Pentecostal Christian mother’s house, preventing her older sister from marrying her gay ex-boyfriend out of spite, and dealing with a breakup from slacker boyfriend Connor (played by Robert Lonsdale), whom she may not entirely be over. Now she must face the battles of getting perfect winged eyeliner, dealing with her uncomfortably incestuous cousin, and ending up in a sex club.
The show, which is based off of Coel’s one woman show entitled Chewing Gum Dreams, was incredibly well received when it first premiered on British television network E4 in October of 2015, and became popular with American audiences when it was released on Netflix a year later. Coel won the BAFTA for Breakout Talent for the show in 2016, as well as a BAFTA for Best Female Performance in a Comedy Program, and gave a very inspiring acceptance speech. (And yes, she did dab before she went on stage.)
Since the premiere of series, Michaela Coel has been interviewed numerous times, and has revealed that she left behind the fervent religious practices of Pentecostal Christianity to pursue a career in comedy and storytelling. She seems to have a knack for sharing wild stories from her childhood and teenage years growing up in the London borough of Hackney, ranging from her mother shaving her pubic hairs, to urinating on a stranger’s front yard–and getting caught. It’s only natural that main character Tracey’s crazy antics are a product of Coel’s imagination; she’s been the sole writer of all twelve of the episodes.
All six episodes of Series 1 are available to watch on Netflix US. You can watch the teaser trailer for Series 2 here. New episodes are every Thursday night on E4.
