Why everyone will soon be raving about Olive Kitteridge.

I was in a lonely place when I stumbled upon a short and not very sweet TV series called Olive Kitteridge earlier this year.

It was shortly after we’d set Foxtel up on our computer, as we patiently waited for Netflix to be launched in Australia. The show popped up on the home screen and as soon as I spotted Frances McDormand, I was sold. There were only four episodes and I was reluctant to get into a show that couldn’t offer me a complete series (I didn’t realise it was an extended mini-series and four one-hour-episodes was all I was gonna get!).

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This week Olive Kitteridge won eight awards at the 67^th Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Limited Series, Outstanding Lead Actor, Outstanding Lead Actress, Outstanding Supporting Actor and Outstanding Writing.

It deserved every single one of them.

The best way I can describe the headspace required to enjoy a show like Olive Kitteridge is that it holds appeal for those who are aching a little inside, or people who are happy, but don’t always expect that happiness to last.

Olive Kitteridge is a harsh, abrasive, no-nonsense teacher who doesn’t enjoy an ideal life and doesn’t seem surprised by that. Nor does she seem all that disturbed by it. It just is. She accepts it.

Her life sucks. Now, what’s for dinner?

In her little life, in her little Maine town, she knows everyone, calls them on their shit, makes sure the local mentally disturbed mum of one of her students has a vegetable to include with their dinner and then she heads home to feed her sad husband and repressed son a healthy meal, over which she directs some sting to them. The kind that makes your eyes water.

Based on the 2008 Pulitzer Prize winning book of the same name written by Elizabeth Strout, the mini-series covers about 25 years of Olive’s life.

You keep watching because you know there is great pain underneath all her misbehaviour. Olive isn’t just mean, sad and depressed, she also has moments of hopefulness (rare), humour and warmth. One second you think husband Henry is trapped in a hellish marriage and then the next you think he should thank his lucky stars he ended up with her.

He feels that way too, I think. He seems to know she’s a diamond in the rough. You understand why he is mesmerised by his new pharmacy assistant Denise, not because he is creepy but because he is trying to feed off the happiness and positivity she beams from every pore.

Why is everyone so obsessed with this new Aussie TV show?

The series begins with an ending. An older, and clearly depressed, Olive is laying out a blanket, grabbing a gun and preparing to shoot herself. She plans to kill herself efficiently. She has a letter, a radio, a lucky charm, a pretty blanket and a gun wrapped in a scarf. We don’t find out if she manages to do it until the final episode. I wouldn’t be surprised if she did, but I still hoped she didn’t. I still hoped she’d find something to show her that her life is worth just one more day, then another, and then perhaps another.

She did warn them. She warned everyone.

“I’m waiting for the dog to die so I can shoot myself,” she tells a friend.

“If the plane crashes I’ll be thinking of you,” she tells her husband.

The TV show that will make you laugh so hard you might wee a bit.

“Baffles me, this world,” she tells new friend Jack Kennison, played by Bill Murray. Jack’s own wife has recently died. Olive found him lying on the ground near a park bench seemingly dead. He wasn’t dead. He had just been willing himself to die, and it seemed to be working until he heard a voice screeching, “Are you dead? Are you dead?”

The four hours I spent with Olive Kitteridge was the most beautiful television I’ve ever watched (once I’d placed the actress who played new pharmacy assistant Denise. It's Zoe Kazan, who played the youngest daughter in the Meryl Streep movie It’s Complicated!).

You get the feeling these actors – Frances McDormand, Zoe Kazan, Bill Murry, Richard Jenkins – are giving the performances of their lives. They’ll never do better work than this. It’s just not possible.

This show doesn’t hold back. You live, you love, you grow old, you might die, you don’t die so you have lunch. It’s comforting in a way because you hold onto the knowledge that even though we’ll all probably end up a little like Olive as we get on in years, it’s not so bad to be like her. Something makes her get up in the morning. Something makes her laugh sharply. Something makes her continue on each day. Something makes her be funny.

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Her son Christopher is a bit like her. They have exactly the same sense of humour. You get to see how their relationship is when he’s all grown up. Brace yourself. You know what they say when people are too similar.

“Mum, why are you nicer to the bad kids than you are to me?”

“Because you’re my son!”

I was bereft when it ended, for the fact it ended as well as how it ended. I wanted more of her, but there was no more.

You can watch Olive Kitteridge on YouTube here, where HBO has released all four episodes for a small fee. Then you can move onto the book on iBooks here, so you can stay in Olive’s world a little longer.