Conversations With My Therapist

Writer: Chezdan Mills

Director: Max James Walker

Chezdan Mills achieved a degree of notoriety on the reality TV show The World’s Strictest Parents as a fish-out-of-water gay teenager living with a very religious American family who preached anti-gay sermons in their church. It is tempting to be glib and say the experience was the making of him as Mills went on to earn a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Film Production ( at Salford University- just a brisk walk from tonight’s venue) and has now produced a short LGBTQ+ comedy series  Conversations with my Therapist for release on streaming services.

The atmosphere inside Manchester’s luxurious Everyman Cinema, where the series launch is held, is relaxed to the point of being cheeky. Certainly the first time I’ve been served by a stripped-to-the-waist waiter who could perform in the Chippendales.

Conversations with my Therapist is a series of bite-size episodes with a total running time of around an hour detailing the issues arising during sessions between Chez  ( author Chezdan Mills) and his anonymous Therapist (Patrick Cerra). The sessions are made complex by Chez having to unexpectedly reside with his Mother (Barbara Ashworth) due to discovering his lover Raoul (Andrew Joseph) embracing a woman. Chez becomes infatuated with Jack (Leo Wilde) but frets about pursuing a relationship as the birth father he never met is rumoured to be so promiscuous there is a possibility Jack might unknowingly be his half-brother.

The script for Conversations with my Therapist is strong, full of quotable lines- I’m not a sexual predator, I just look like one. The series avoids being just a string of jokes with some endearingly eccentric characters and the self-obsessed Chez’s foot-in-the-mouth insensitivity. Chez’s Mother is somehow unaware that the family dog passed away and was replaced and considers it economical to build her own coffin piece by piece. Having offended a colleague who is grieving the loss of her uncle Chez half-heartedly tries to make amends by offering to try and find a replacement in Tesco’s.

Conversations with my Therapist is promoted as being based upon real life and awkward experiences. There is a punk-rock DIY vibe to the series – as a mainstream media outlet could not be secured Mills devised the series for streaming which allows freedom to employ provocative humour. The performances are not always relaxed enough to be convincingly natural, a situation emphasised by director Max James Walker filming most scenes in close-up which exaggerates reactions.

A point is made that the character Chez uses humour as a defence mechanism including a cringe-inducing sequence of him offering desperate  excuses to try and avoid having sex with a casual pick-up whose name he cannot remember. Surprisingly, therefore, some of the most effective scenes are when Chezdan Mills addresses serious issues in a straightforward manner. His explanation of how Chez developed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) as a coping strategy is all the more powerful by being expressed as a prosaic description. By comparison the debilitating effect of anti-depressant prescription medication upon his sex drive is depicted in a way which is vulgar, visual and extremely funny.

Conversations with my Therapist overcomes the occasional stiff performance and the limitations of the episode format to offer saucy but perceptive insight into mental health issues.

Conversations With My Therapist will be streaming this summer.