What makes it different from others?

Sadly Over-hyped

i must have seen a different film!!

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Cathy Jamison (Laura Linney) has cancer and she wants to change her life. She's not sure how. She and childish Paul (Oliver Platt) have a problem marriage. Her brother Sean Tolkey (John Benjamin Hickey) is deliberately poor. Her son Adam (Gabriel Basso) is a bratty teenager. She has a tough time telling everybody. She's not a particularly good teacher and Andrea Jackson (Gabourey Sidibe) is her smart-mouthed student. Marlene (Phyllis Somerville) is her pain in the ass neighbor until she becomes her most profound friend.This show tries very hard to be quirky but it never really achieves full comedy. I like Laura Linney and Oliver Platt. I also love the storage locker with all the birthday presents. The show fades a bit after the end of season two. It seems to take the show one way but season 3 took it all back when it opened. The show deals with death all the time but it seems it lost its nerve. I do like the final 4 episode wrap up.

I enjoyed this series very much for the first few season's. But somewhere around where her husband starts his writing, Just started seeing how self absorbed the main character is. Just started to annoy me. I know she is ill etc. But her character just worked my nerves where by the last few episodes I lost any feeling what so ever for her.So that I didn't enjoy the last season at all. Too bad for me. The acting is good. and the character of Kathy sure wasn't that way at one point. I enjoyed it so much for the start that I felt cheated by the writing. Wonder if there was a change in the writers at some point? Not sure why. I must have some kind of selfishness issue myself.

This is - by a mile - my current favourite TV show. We've just finished Series Three in the UK, with the fourth and final series starting next week. A comedy about a woman with a terminal cancer diagnosis is clearly trespassing on the very edge of taste, but THE BIG C is much more - or much less - than a comedy. It's a family drama that balances - perfectly, in my view - on the fine line between comedy and tragedy.As Cathy and Paul Jamison, Laura Linney and Oliver Platt give beautifully judged performances. Cathy is feisty and independent, but also frightened and needy. Paul is supportive despite going through a health and career crisis of his own - not to mention a bad dose of the Seven (14) Year Itch. All Paul's problems coalesced in Series Three when he hooked up with lifestyle guru Susan Sarandon (she was sublime!) who threw him a career lifeline and then - literally - grabbed him by the balls. John Benjamin Hickey as Cathy's retro-hippy brother Sean is a clever variant on WILL AND GRACE's ditzy friend Karen. Series Three gave Sean his best plot line when (though straight) he took over a gay phone-sex line and then became the playmate of a bi couple. Cathy and Paul's teenage son Adam (Gabriel Basso) is almost a twist on Edina's painfully normal daughter Saffy in AB-FAB. As an ongoing character I don't think Gabourey Sidibe's Andrea works as well as Phyllis Somerville's Marlene whom she replaced; dead Marlene intermittently haunts Cathy much as Nate Fisher was haunted by his dad in SIX FEET UNDER - before he turned into a ghost himself.The Jamisons, for me, are the most endearing family since the weird and wacky Fishers; I wish they - and the Fishers! - lived on my street. The last episode of SIX FEET UNDER was one of the greatest hours of television drama, brilliantly inventive, deeply human, intensely moving. I don't know how Series Four of THE BIG C will end, but I'm guessing Cathy will somehow sail off into another sunset, much as she swam into one this week. No Spoilers, please, from US viewers - I'm happy to wait and see!

Well, after hanging in there this far into Season 3, I think I'm about done with The Big C after the young couple has decided that Cathy and Paul would be perfect adoptive parents for their baby. You have got to be kidding me -- what a stupid and completely unrealistic plot twist. Besides, I've had enough of seeing those two raise an a-hole of a son . . . why in the world would I want to see them start from scratch with someone else's child. Yeech.I'm tired of every character in this show -- some I had a hard time tolerating from the start, and others who have become unbearable especially this season. I miss Cynthia Nixon in the roll of her good friend (although her relationship with Cathy's brother was ridiculous), as well as Marlene -- the cranky neighbor lady who they killed off at the end of Season 1.Don't get me wrong, I am so thankful that Showtime, HBO, and the other cable TV outlets do original programming, because there hasn't been a single show on Network TV that I've liked for many years. That having been said, I think they should be careful about not wearing out their welcome with shows that are ill-conceived or that stay on long after the writing has ceased to be decent. The Big C is already in this category, and I find myself hoping that Cathy's melanoma makes a comeback pretty quickly.