Aisling Bea is a comic actress, comedienne, and writer. This Irish actress was born Aisling (pronounced Ashling) Cliodhnadh O’Sullivan and began her career in 1989 with her appearance in Fair City. In 2012, she was cast in the sitcoms, Cardinal Burns and Dead Boss. She originally wanted to be a dramatic actress but seemed to be pushed towards comedy, so she decided to give stand up comedy a try. For her stand up career, she has won the Gilded Balloon’s So You Think You’re Funny award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. She began her own show in 2013 titled C’est La Bea; it was also successful and attracted awards.
Since then, she has starred in a couple of other sitcoms such as Trollied, The Delivery Man and crime dramas such as Hard Sun, The Fall and so on. She has appeared on many panel shows such as QI!, 8 Cats out of 10, Insert Name Here, Taskmaster among others. She wrote This Way Up, a television series airing on Channel 4. It began airing on 8 August 2019. Below are 10 of her movies ranked from best to worst.
10 Aisling Bea Movies and TV Shows – Best to Worst
This Way Up (2019 -)
In addition to being a splendid actress, Aisling Bea is also an outstanding writer. She wrote and co-starred in This Way Up, a British comedy-drama. This sitcom marks the first film Bea has written and it has currently run for one season containing 6 episodes. Its executive producer is Sharon Horgan who is also an Irish actress and comedienne. Sharon appears in this series as Bea’s protective elder sister, Shona.
The series revolves around the adventures of a young Irish Catholic teacher residing in London. Aine played by Aisling Bea is single and suffers a nervous breakdown. It also stars Tobias Menzies and Aasif Mandvi. It has received positive reviews so far from both critics and audiences. On Rotten Tomatoes 22 critics scored the series 92% while the audience gave an approval rating of 100%.
State of the Union (2019 -)
Another 2019 series making the rounds in British Comedy is State of the Union. It is regarded as one of the best series Aisling Bea has ever appeared in due to its profound success. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series is a clever and beautifully acted piece. State of the Union was written by Nick Hornby and directed by Stephen Frears. It stars and as its main characters.
This British comedy is about a couple who are estranged and on each episode attend a marriage therapist session. The humor is not in the sessions but how they prepare for them. Before each session, they meet at a bar to go over their stories on how they met, what kept them together and what has and is creating a void in their relationships. The series, though humorous, attempts to discuss contemporary relationship issues.
For their performances in this series, both Rosamund Pike and Chris O’Dowd were rewarded with a Primetime Emmy Awards. The series also won an Emmy for Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama Series. The series has also enjoyed positive reviews and ratings so far. On Metacritic, it has an approval rating of 76% and 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The Fall (2013 – 2016)
The Fall is a British-Irish crime series that has recorded huge successes universally. It was first aired on RTÉ One in Ireland and BBC Two in the UK. It was shot in Northern Ireland and was written, created and directed by Allan Cubitt while it was directed by Jakob Verbruggen. It ran from 13 May 2013 to 28 October 2016. This crime series is centered on serial murders being perpetuated in Ireland. The victims are professional women in Belfast.
Starring alongside Aisling Bea is , , Laura Donnelly, Bronagh Waugh, Ben Peel, Michael McElhatton, Niamh McGrady, and Frank McCusker. The apt performances of its cast and incredible plot development earned the series a lot of award nominations and a couple of awards. It also recorded impress ratings. It’s season one and two had an approval rating of 100% while its season 3 was rated 71%. The movies’ average critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes was 84% while its average audience approval rating was 87%.
Plebs (2013 -)
Plebs started airing on 25 March 2013 on ITV2 and has five seasons (at the time of writing). It is a comedy show from an ancient angle. It was produced by Tom Basden, Caroline Leddy, Sam Leifer, and Teddy Leifer and stars Tom Rosenthal, Jonathan Pointing, Joel Fry, Ryan Sampson, Tom Basden, and Doon Mackichan.
This Aisling Bea movie is about three men looking for girlfriends, trying to secure jobs and also seeking to climb the social ladder in the great City of Rome.
The titled Plebs originates from the Roman class of citizens called Plebs. Plebs were common people in Rome – the masses and the alternative to patricians. Plebs wasn’t one of Bea’s very successful films, nevertheless, it was very good. The average ratings for all the seasons released to date is 8.1/10 on IMDb.
Gap Year (2017)
Gap Year is yet another British hilarious comedy. This comedy strip started airing on E4 on 23 February 2017. Tom Basden, Jamie Campbell, and Joel Wilson try to create a series that is dramatic as well as funny. Gap Year so far has had only 1 season containing 8 episodes. It stars new, upcoming and already known actors such as Ade Oyefeso, Anders Hayward, Tim Key, Alice Lee, and Brittney Wilson. Aisling appeared as Kendra in two episodes of the show.
Gap Year hasn’t won any known awards but its audience and critics reception has been mostly positive. On iMDb, it was rated 7/10.
Damned (2016 – 2018)
The Children’s Services social workers at Elm Heath council are damned as they are faced with a lot of challenges in their day to day activities. The government is cutting funds while most of the staff are unavailable due to incessant stress-related sick leave because of the increasing clientele. Damned is a British sitcom that began airing on 27 September 2016, premiering on Channel 4. It ran for two seasons and ended on 21 March 2018 when the pilot episode was broadcast.
Aisling Bea plays the character Anne-Marie in of its episodes. She starred alongside Jo Brand, Alan Davies, Kevin Eldon, Himesh Patel, Isy Suttie, and Morwenna Banks. Jo Brand and Morwenna Banks worked together to create this entertaining comedy show. Its online rating includes the 7/10 score on IMDb.
Trollied (2011-2018)
This is one of the longest-running series Aisling Bea has appeared in, if not the longest. This series lasted for 7 years and was made into 7 series with 71 episodes. Trollied is a fairly realistic comedy show filmed in a shop. All the episodes are based on customer, seller and manager interaction within an imaginary supermarket. Trollied was the creative effort of a lot of people. Some of them are Anne Marie O’Connor, Paul Doolan and Ash Atalla (creators) and Paul Doolan, Chris Haywood, Anne Marie O’Connor, Nat Saunders, Julie Rutterford, Ben Edwards and Stuart Farrell (some of the writers).
Its ensemble cast include Jason Watkins, Chanel Cresswell, Carl Rice, Beverly Rudd, Rita May, Faye McKeever, Lorraine Cheshire, and Dominic Coleman. The series was met with average and mixed reactions. While some critics thought it funny, others found it to be ‘lazy’. The audience ratings on iMDb were above average -it had an approval rating of 7.3/10.
Hard Sun (2018)
Neil Cross’s Hard Sun is a crime drama but not a very good one. According to critics, the film is full of clichés that pull it down to a muddled mess whiich translated to low ratings from them. Rotten Tomatoes’ critics rated the series 48% while Metacritic awarded the film series a 46% rating.
Hard Sun premiered on BBC One on 6 January 2018 and featured Jim Sturgess, Agyness Deyn, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Owain Arthur, Lorraine Burroughs, and Richard Coyle.
This Aisling Bea movie is a pre-apocalyptic film centered on two police officers who find out the world will be destroyed in 5 years by a cosmic event. It turns out the government have known about this all along but want to keep it a secret to prevent worldwide chaos. They will also do anything to keep it a secret, hence the lives of the officers are in grave danger.
I Feel Bad (2018 -)
Every wife and mother tries to be the best that she can be and sometimes she fails or rather has some setbacks. I Feel Bad is an attempt to portray the ups and downs that a mother, boss, wife, friend, and daughter face daily in a hilarious way. Unfortunately, despite the pedigree of this show, it turns out not to be as funny as it was expected to be. This would explain the poor critical ratings it has recorded.
The show written by Aseem Batra was based on a book titled I Feel Bad: All Day. Every Day. About Everything by Orli Auslander.
On Rotten Tomatoes, its approval rating was 31% indicating critical failure. On the other hand, the audiences were not so pleased with the series and rated it a little above average 75% on Rotten Tomatoes and 5.7/10 on IMDb.
The Trap (2015)
The Trap is a British comedy horror movie that stars Alexander Kirk, Felicity Wren, James Wren and so on. It was directed by Fergus March who also wrote the movie alongside Alan Freestone and James Wren. The movie is about a trap set by a psychotic man who enjoys watching people die in gruesome ways. When some people invade his home to make way with valuables they discover this insane truth and are caught in the trap. On IMDb, the approval rating was 4.8/10.
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