Pure isn’t a show I set out to watch, but while surfing the flotsam and jetsam of Tubi I spotted Rooster’s Charly Clive on the poster and curiously clicked play. She stars as Marnie, a disturbed young Scottish woman plagued by intrusive sexual thoughts she can’t control, a condition that has filled her with anxiety and distress. This leads to an utter meltdown during the world’s most awkward wedding toast, which prompts her to flee all the way to London to make a new life. She finds refuge in the cramped flat of a relocated schoolmate named Shereen (Kiran Sonia Sawar), and, in an attempt to figure herself out, immediately embarks on a series of romantic and sexual experiments. They almost always end in disaster, but they do lead to small, incremental headway on her personal issues, while also building an unexpected found family.
Clive’s performance in Pure could well have been a massively convincing audition tape for Rooster; if that show’s Katie Russo is mildly erratic, this one’s Marnie displays profound levels of neuroticism, which Clive is superb at bringing to life. Her awkward, emotional journey accrues both personal insights and a smattering of misfit friendships, leading to great support from Sawar, Niamh Algar, Joe Cole, and Anthony Welsh, among others. Lasting only one season, Pure doesn’t really have a chance to build a must-watch legacy, and it ends with an unfinished aftertaste, but that actually seems appropriate given the never-ending self discovery of life that Marnie has commenced. Her problems may never be one-hundred percent fixed, so perhaps it’s fitting that we’re left to imagine her still out there striving to improve.
