Lay Down Your Burdens: Content Advice and Resources

If the content warnings suggest that you might find the show difficult to watch, you can read these character summaries. This will help you prepare for any difficult bits and decide if the show is right for you. This section contains spoilers.

Donni is a stranger who blows in from the cold, he is carrying a lot of emotional baggage. His mother committed suicide by stabbing herself and he had to clean up the blood. He is carrying her ashes and her memory with him and struggling to make sense of the world. He tells us the impact it’s had on him and mentions his OCD feeling like his head is cracked.

Fin worries about the state of the world, she has anxiety about the future, about climate change and humanitarian crisis and struggles with constant feelings of responsibility and guilt. She reflects on current conflicts around the world mentioning bombing of hospitals and violence against children.

Shirley focuses on her high powered job to distract from her feelings of being lost. These feelings date back from when she was a child and she describes ambiguous  moments of childhood trauma. She also mentions the impact of undiagnosed ADHD. Shirley also describes the difficulty of being a woman, briefly referencing experiences of sexual assault, pregnancy and abortion.

Dick is our happy go lucky gamesmaster, life and soul of the party but under the smile he struggles too. He has a little baby boy and the pressure and fear of being a parent bothers him constantly. His partner suffered with post-natal depression and his grandmother is living with dementia and he feels the responsibility to them both deeply.

Sammy’s dad left when he was young, he waits and hopes that he will show up one day to have a pint with him and tell him that he’s proud of him.

Sara is the glue that holds us all together, the pub landlady who takes care of everyone. She has been diagnosed with cancer and during the evening she learns that it has spread. We see her processing this information and becoming less stable; she has to admit that she needs the others' support now.