Spending My Birthday With Ann Droid

The PopCulteer
August 14, 2026

It’s brutal honesty time, folks.

Yesterday was my birthday, and as such, I slacked off. I did not do any PopCulting, and because this week has had a lot of moving pieces, I didn’t prepare anything in advance for today. So I’m cranking this out Friday morning.

What I did do was enjoy a quiet day with my beautiful wife. We ran around a little bit and just took it easy. I had a mid-week birthday this year and we didn’t plan any trips around it because we’re going to do a ten-day trip for our anniversary in a couple of weeks, and it just seemed like overkill to do another right before.

So we just took it easy, relaxed and spent time together while close to 350 birthday wishes piled up on social media (and thanks again to everybody who took the time to do that).

Then we settled down to binge-watch a series that premiered last month on the BBC, and is available in America if you have a VPN and know how to use it. I’ve seen reports that it’s coming to Peacock in the US, but who wants to wait for that to happen?  Here’s a quick review…

Ann Droid is a brilliant six-episode sitcom, created by Diane Morgan (Cunk, Mandy) and Sarah Kendall and it manages to be fiercely hilarious and satirical while also being heartwarminig and engaging.

Ann Droid tells the story of Sue, a widow whose husband died 18 months earlier, and her new android assistant robot, whom she names Linda, after her sister…who she can’t stand.

Linda is a “pre-loved” and discontinued AnnDroid Z58/100 Basic Eldercare Robot given to Sue by her son, Michael, because he’s reconciling with a wife who cheated on him during the time his father was dying.

The series is set in 2029, so it’s not a far-flung futuristic tale. It’s quite plausible, given the rise of AI. Sue’s life is populated by a universe of realistic characters who happen to be ripe with comedic potential. We have the loser son, the overbearing friend that everybody hates, an array of cantakerous elderly friends, plus the cheating wife of the son, the guy she cheated with and the various employers of Michael.

What makes the show work, aside from the sharp and well-paced writing and direction, are the performances. Sue Johnston is well-known to Anglophiles from her work on Downton Abbey and The Royle Family, and Diane Morgan has never been less than incredible in everything she’s done. Whether she’s the dimwitted documentarian, Philomena Cunk, or the erratic underachiever, Mandy, she’s simply one of the most briliant comic actors around. As Linda, she manages to balance an almost alien-like naivety with a battery of knowledge equal to the internet, and she’s just as capable as AI of misconstruing reality and screwing things up completely.

She’s very much like ChatGPT with a body, and the comedic potential is fully-realized here.

The supporting cast is note-perfect as well, and the show is one of the rare programs that I’ve actually binged. It’s that compelling and hilarious.

Watch this preview…

And that’s all I’m talking about in this week’s PopCulteer, because I slacked off for my birthday. It was either write about this, or the cake. Check PopCult for fresh content every day, and all our regular features.