A pivotal scene occurs early on in the first series of Catastrophe (2015–). Rob (Rob Delaney) floats the idea that he and new partner Sharon (Sharon Horgan) should relocate from London to Boston in the US. The move is logical. As Rob observes, living in Boston is ‘cheaper by probably about, 500%’, and given that his employers are increasingly sceptical of his plans to create a European office, his career prospects in advertising appear to be more secure in Massachusetts than they are in Greater London. None the less, a cut to Sharon's disgusted facial expression reveals that she is appalled by the very idea. ‘Once you graduate to a city like London or New York, you don't regress to Boston,’ she explains. Dismissing Rob's concerns about his unemployment, Sharon affirms that the couple will ‘sort it out here’. The audience thus understands that Catastrophe, its characters and its (anti-) romantic narrative can be located only in London, the quintessential global city. This chapter examines how love across the Atlantic, as embodied by Sharon and Rob's budding relationship, is mediated through its London setting. As I demonstrate, romance is increasingly viewed as a pragmatic, rather than idealised, solution to precarity in contemporary culture. In Catastrophe, this is made manifest through both characters’ – and especially Rob's – troubled relationship to their urban environs. Examining the show's mobilisation of discourses of authenticity, realism and ‘quality’ television itself, this chapter considers why the show is set in the areas around London Fields, in the borough of Hackney. In the context of increasingly transatlantic models of television distribution, I argue that the show's use of a globalised East London speaks to a transnational and upmarket aesthetic that is modelled on the types of urban locales made visible in Catastrophe.

Crossing the Atlantic, Crossing Genres

Catastrophe is the fruit of a relationship forged across the Atlantic between Sharon Horgan, a London-born Irishwoman who co-wrote the less popular (though much admired) Pulling (2006–9) and Dead Boss (2012), and Rob Delaney, an American stand-up comedian dubbed ‘the funniest person on Twitter’ (Erickson 2012).