A Funny Kind of Love

Josh Lawson's sexual comedy starts boldly: with the image of a naked foot approached slowly by a protruding tongue. This toe-sucking episode marks the beginning of a journey through the bedroom lives of a suburban neighbourhood. Along the way we encounter roleplaying fetishism, acquire the terms 'dacryphilia' and 'somnophilia' for our sexual vocabularies, explore the challenges of calling a sex line in sign language and investigate the conundrum of the rape fantasy.

This could all be easy ammo for a raunchy comedy with the aim of sniggering at all things sexual, but what's most refreshing about A Funny Kind of Love (its – better – international title is The Little Death) is the humanising way it draws its characters as fully realised, perfectly 'regular' people with particular preferences in bed. In almost every case, the discovery of their kink is as much of a surprise to them as it is to anyone else, and the humour comes from the disconnect between the prudish veneer of their everyday suburbia and the desires hiding underneath it. And boy, does it come hard. [Ross McIndoe]