Review of Anna Thomas' short film on iPlayer

It could be straight out of Jane Austen: a girl is infatuated by a boy from afar but dare not declare her love for fear of being ostracised by what society might say.

Only this girl is a yeti with a penchant for knitting, who’d be driven out of her home in the Welsh woodlands if exposed by the amateur cryptozoologist on her tail.

That’s the bonkers premise of comedian Anna Thomas’s short film now available on iPlayer after being screened on BBC One in Wales last night. Yet no matter how strange the set-up, Lady Bigfoot is a tender and utterly charming portrait of an outsider’s yearning. 

And it’s very funny, too, with little jokes squeezed in where they have no right to be, plus mad non-sequiturs that – like the entire plot – no viewer could predict coming. The incident that park-keeper Emyr (comic Matt Rees) recalls to jog his memory of yeti-hunter Jared (Jimmy Johnson) is a wildly hilarious curveball, as is the Bigfoot’s idea of what a cash machine is.

Emyr is the object of her longings, doomed to be unreciprocated. As played by former BBC New Comedy Award winner Thomas herself, our hairy heroine is like a lost, lonely adolescent, pining naively for the park-keeper’s affections.

The guileless otherworldliness of the character perfectly fits Thomas’s eccentric comic sensibilities, as she shares odd thoughts about worms or goes to strange lengths to imagine a date with Emyr. 

Meanwhile, fellow stand-up Jo Enright plays Carol, a maternal figure and the only human who knows of Lady Bigfoot’s existence and can be trusted with the secret of her existence. They share a bond as fellow lonely singletons.

The film has echoes of The Boosh, and director Ryan Andrew Hooper makes it all look rather fantastic. But it’s the delightfully surreal script and sympathetic central character which makes this such a delight.

Review date: 5 Jul 2023
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett