Slamdance: “Victorian Ladies” -
One of the fascinating aspects of humanity is how so much can change throughout the course of history, and yet how so much can stay exactly the same. This is especially true for relationships between people. As much as we want to believe that our modern selves are superior to those who lived in the Middle Ages or the Regency era, we’re not. We all fall into the same traps over and over again when it comes to friends, family, and dating. Victorian Ladies, premiering at the 2025 Slamdance Film Festival, comes from the minds of Jessica Taylor and Becca Schall of Accountable Comedy. The short web series, as implied by the title, centers on the interpersonal lives of four women living in the Victorian era.
Victorian Ladies feels out of time. This sensation isn’t just because the series blends modern sensibility and humor with an era that began almost two hundred years ago, but because of its execution. In the early days of YouTube, long before the concept of YouTuber as a profession entered the public consciousness, the site was filled with absurdist, low-fi, clearly homemade scripted comedy skits. Potter Puppet Pals, Charlie the Unicorn, and other early YouTube content shaped the comedy sensibilities of a generation. Victorian Ladies is a return to that quick-witted style where the jokes come so fast that the humor isn’t always immediately picked up on, but then the full weight of the joke lands and you find yourself lost in laughter.
Accountable Comedy
The magic of Victorian Ladies is that it’s such a simple concept with a simple execution, but every second counts. Each of the episodes is only a minute long, so there’s no time or room for superfluous filler. From the very first moment of episode one, it’s clear that Schall and Taylor know they have to grab the full attention of the audience. The tools they have available are limited because of their paper doll-esque main characters, so they rely quite a bit on Schall’s editing. The series opens with Abigail (Taylor) crashing onto the scene and asking if Daphne (Schall) wants to do something bad. It’s a preposterous beginning, but one that works exceptionally well and sets the silly scene for what’s to come.
Season one of Victorian Ladies has nine episodes and a total runtime of nine minutes, which makes for a perfectly bingeable piece of comedy gold. The episodes center on Abigail, Daphne, Caroline (Schall), and Beatrice (Taylor). Each episode puts some or all of these women in a variety of situations, like crashing a funeral to find a hot-yet-bereaved nephew, the thorniness of owing your friends money, and the thrill of holding someone’s hand for the first time. Each episode is a delight, and it’s a crime the whole season clocks in shorter than the time it takes to boil pasta. Victorian Ladies is an utter delight, a throwback to the simpler, funnier days of YouTube.
Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Letterboxd, & YouTube. Check out Movies with My Dad, a new podcast recorded on the car ride home from the movies.