Show caption Out of his box… Jim Carrey in Kidding Netflix & quill The true man show? Why Jim Carrey’s new show Kidding is too close to the bone The actor has long mastered the role of the comedy sad sack – but in this new creation he’s eerily adept at playing a children’s show host in emotional freefall Fiona Sturges Sat 24 Nov 2018 11.00 GMT Share on Facebook

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In Kidding (Thursday, 10.40pm, Sky Atlantic), Michel Gondry’s latest tragicomedy, Jim Carrey is Jeff, a children’s show host and pillar of decency beloved by families everywhere. His show, Mr Pickles’ Puppet Time, features mushy songs about trusting your emotions, and an assortment of puppet pals, among them Snagglehorse, a large sky-blue pony inside which two operators indulge in frenzied frottage during their tea breaks.

Everyone loves sweet, dimply Jeff with the atrociously bobbed hair, but his heart is no longer in it. Picture Fred Rogers in the midst of an existential crisis, or Mr Tumble quietly weeping while sitting in the bath. Following the death of his son, Phil, in a car accident, and the subsequent collapse of his marriage, Jeff has come to the realisation that life can be ugly and cruel. Not only does he now live alone in an apartment block full of permanently sloshed college kids, but his other son, Will, has lost all respect for him. “Change your outfit,” he instructs his dad. “You look like Rosa Parks’s bus driver.”

One day, a drama about a comedian or comic actor will come along in which the protagonist is well adjusted, in a solid relationship and deliriously happy in their work – but this is not it. In their search for Mr Pickles, one imagines casting directors took roughly six seconds to find their man. Carrey, whose elasticated face can do daft and devastated in the blink of an eye, has long excelled as the comedy sad sack (Yes Man), the heroic naïf (The Truman Show), or the troubled clown (Man on the Moon, in which the actor went full method and nearly lost his mind, a venture captured in the remarkable making-of documentary Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond). In Kidding he gets to do all three at once. The series, written by Weeds creator Dave Holstein, follows a run of big-screen flops for Carrey, including the dystopian western The Bad Batch and this year’s critically eviscerated Dark Crimes, as well as a run of personal upheavals including the death of his former partner, Cathriona White, from a prescription drug overdose.

Having a grieving actor who has spoken of feeling imprisoned by his goofy screen persona playing a grieving actor imprisoned by his goofy screen persona brings an undeniable frisson here. Carrey is extraordinary, wearing pain and disappointment as a second skin. Meanwhile, the push and pull between maintaining the familiar public face and revealing the man underneath is keenly drawn.