Man Meets Daughter is a Brighton-based comedy about Lou, a Judo obsessed teenage girl, who wants to get to know her real dad, 90s lads’ mag icon Guy Mansfield.
Lou and Guy help, hinder and enlighten one another as they navigate the choppy waters of being an awkward, anxious teenager, and a grown man with a cringey past, trying to get some semblance of a career back on track.
Shunted to one-side by her social group for ‘going weird’ while grieving for her stepdad, Lou’s Judo brown belt exam is looming, while middle-aged Guy can’t get arrested, despite being a decent writer. It’s bleak out there for a feminist teenager who’s lost her ‘rock’ and a freelancer known for his now entirely inappropriate ‘sex adventures’ column.
Through the series Guy and Lou give it their best shot at coping with their respective changing worlds and how they’ve shifted beyond their comprehension – Lou’s cautious optimism often jarring with Guy’s more miserablist approach to life. Guy thinks it’s unfair that he’s being made to pay for his past behaviour, while Lou’s visions of a bright, female-led, future with her supportive stepdad by her side need a serious re-jig.
Man Meets Daughter explores how a forty something man and a teenage girl, with entirely different perspectives and experiences, can forge a relationship that means the world to them.
HE’S A 40-SOMETHING FREELANCE JOURNALIST WHO’S WAY PAST HIS SELL-BY DATE.
SHE’S HIS ESTRANGED 16-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER WITH HER WHOLE LIFE AHEAD OF HER.
THE STORY
Guy Mansfield is a former lads mag icon who spent his 20s and 30s riding the crest of a wave before coming a cropper when the internet butchered his industry.
Now in his 40s, and barely employable, he’s swapped his lavish London life for a dingy one-bed flat near the sea. He’s a relic from a bygone era. It feels like life has left him behind.
Lou is the teenage daughter he’s only just met – the result of a one-night-stand in the noughties with a considerably older woman (he was a 20-something gunslinger, she was nearer 40). A year after losing Tony, her stepdad, Lou has decided that she now wants to build bridges with her biological father.
Lou gate-crashing Guy’s world becomes the catalyst for him getting his shit together (or attempting to anyway), with more than a little help from his best friend, next door neighbour, and chief advisor on life, Viv. After years at sea he wants – or feels he needs – to make something of himself again, and he’ll try anything to get a good article published, even though he barely understands any of it.
Can he become a decent father to the teenage daughter he barely knows? And can Lou learn to respect a man who was once famous for his very un-PC “Sex Adventures”?
The Cast
Guy
A 40 something freelance writer who is way past his sell-by date. He went to Brighton a few years earlier to write a book, ran out of time, lost the deal and found that most of the magazines he’d worked on had shut down – he’s been depressed ever since. He lives in a scuzzy one-bed flat, and is actively trying to get his career back without much luck. He’s a relic from a different time and he’s not taken seriously any more. He is determined to succeed and become relevant again.
Casting suggestion: Joe Wilkinson
Lou
Guy’s teenage lovechild. Her stepdad died a couple of years ago, and according to her year group at school she “went weird”. She hides her grief behind obsessive ideas, she was vegan but loved Maccy D’s too much, she tried poetry but wasn’t good, most recently she has become obsessed with Judo and is practicing for her brown belt – though the way she talks about it you’d think she was going for her ninth Dan. She is well-meaning, kind, but can come across as strange and intense.
Casting suggestion: Albertine Kotting McMillan
Viv
Guy’s neighbour, his best friend, and his confidante. After years of working in dissatisfying corporate jobs, she decided to completely change her life. Her dream is to be an expert in rare trainers – having set up her own barely-viewed Youtube channel. She is also mad keen on what she calls “finding the source”, and teaches a very casual Thai Chi class in her lounge.
Casting suggestion: Rachel Stubbings
Drew
Lou’s best friend at school. Gangly, awkward, teenage, nerdy but desperate to hide it at all times. Incredibly kind-hearted but never comfortable in his own skin. Guy obviously thinks he is ridiculous. He tries to be cool and edgy, but he knows all the words to Frozen. He’s massively in love with Lou.
Casting suggestion: Chaneil Kular
Erma
The local fashionista, in her own head anyway. She works part time in the local coffee shop, where she generally makes wry judgements about the customers, acting almost as a one-person Greek chorus on the state of Guy’s life. Funny, cutting, and always dressed immaculately.
Casting suggestion: Kemah Bob
Jonny
Guy’s old colleague, a reformed druggie, he now runs Shockwave – a popular website/brand aimed squarely at the fully woke. He doesn’t suffer any of Guy’s bullshit (the pair have a complex history) and he can be impossible to please.
Casting suggestion: Nick Helm
Gwen
Lou’s mum. An artist deep into her 50s, she is embarrassed that she ever shagged such a ridiculous man as Guy. She knew she couldn’t keep the truth of her biological father away from Lou. She’s caring and headstrong, but also quite lonely following the death of her husband Tone a year or so earlier.
Casting suggestion: Doon Mackichan
What happens next?
Having been reunited, the developing relationship between Lou and Guy sits at the forefront of the series.
At first, it’s almost as if Lou is trying to mould Guy into being more like her beloved stepdad Tone, but there’s a gradual shift in The Force as she realises that, actually, she probably needs to understand Guy and who he is first. It’s a big learning curve for both of them. All set against the backdrop of Guy attempting to rekindle his career, while Lou works towards gaining a Judo belt.
Subsequent episodes find Guy and Lou (plus Viv and Drew) going on a weird “family” camping trip together – part of a freebie for the Shockwave website. Lou asks Guy to help with the ‘memorial party’ for her stepdad Tone, then freaks out when she sees him and her mum Gwen getting on so well – almost as if she is disrespecting the dead.
Guy attends Lou’s Judo training and clumsily flirts with her sensei, much to her abject horror. Lou is ghosted by a boy at school and doesn’t know why, Guy re-examines his past treatment of women and is shocked to find that they barely remember him. Lou is humiliated when Guy’s old “sex adventures” columns are unearthed on Twitter and attacked by feminist groups. Guy watches agog as his old nemesis Jonny Wise promotes a journalistic memoir that’s pretty much pure bullshit.
As the series draws to a close, Lou has finally accepted that Guy will never be an identikit replacement for Tone, while Guy has made great steps in becoming a better person from getting to know his daughter. But then, just as they’ve learned to love each other, their relationship is delivered a potential death blow when it’s revealed that Guy didn’t just find out about Lou when she got in touch out of the blue – he knew about her existence all along.
