Mr Robot

For a long time, this show was just an image that appeared in all of Amazon Prime’s advertising.  Every time I saw it, I thought about how strange it was that someone would have the surname Robot, let alone that we would be asked to refer to them with such a formal title.  It didn’t say anything about the programme, its story or contents, and was therefore weirdly unappealing.

This all changed one weekday evening when my housemate, who is normally happiest watching Friends reruns (as am I, sometimes), declared he had heard from a friend that this was a great show and could we watch it.  Given that the TV (and the whole flat and, in fact, everything in it) belongs to him, I was happy to agree.  As a sofa sloth and binge viewer, anything I can do to feel less guilty about sprawling across the living room devouring show after show is a welcome move.

Episode one, series one of Mr Robot is one of the best opening episodes I have ever seen.  On this note I would liken it to Glee (based on setting up a premise with amazing neatness in a pilot), but the similarities end there.  We were both sucked into a filthy, pulsating Manhattan, impressed by our initiation into computer hacking tricks, gripped by the filthy characters and hooked on Elliot.  Our lead character is like nobody else in TV.  Vulnerable and powerful, and incredibly complex, half of your viewing energy with this show will be taken up by simply trying to figure this lad out.

Played by Rami Malek, Elliot is 50% brooding with his hood pulled down and 50% brooding with his hood pulled up.  If you can move on from the fact this constant black hoodie on an adult screams suburban fan of emo music, there’s a lot to enjoy about Elliot.  It’s also worth noting that Malek’s unique look means that the majority of the screen is filled with wonderfully enormous eyeballs at any given moment.

From an amazing opening episode, series one winds itself up with increasing and ceaseless tension.  By the very day after our discovery of Mr Robot, my housemate had watched all nine episodes.  And while it took me weeks to get through the second series, thanks to not really understanding the growing complication of its plot (the fault of my own limited brain), he was done with that by the next day.

Don’t be put off by the reams of computer-related content.  While there are only so many shots of download progress bars a drama can sustain, Mr Robot is more than that.  It provides brutal commentary on our modern society, presented through the breath-taking characterisation of its leads.  Darlene is great, but the most stock of the main characters.  Portia Doubleday as Angela commands her scenes with goosebump-inducing subtlety, while Martin Hallström’s Tyrell Wellick is never predictable.  For the life of me, I can’t enjoy any of Christian Slater’s scenes – his shouting and gurning just seems at odds with a more sophisticated tone struck by the rest of the show.

Series three is due on October 11^th and maybe this will trigger the end of Amazon banging on about American Gods with autoplay clips in everyone’s Facebook feed.  Mr Robot will be back across their ubiquitous marketing, but this time I will know what it is and that I am going to watch it.

The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Sometimes a show can have a theme tune that is so much fun, you can begin to fear that the actual programme it precedes will never live up to the expectation.  Luckily, Netflix’s The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is every bit as silly, fun and poignant as its autotuned opening credits.  Not only that, but it’s also a very useful sequence as it has the dual purpose of explaining the full premise each time it plays.  Kimmy has grown up in an undergrown bunker, held hostage by the deluded leader of a sadistic clan (played by a somehow still charming Jon Hamm).  Now free, she moves to New York with an enormous lack of street smarts.  For Kimmy, every disappointing slap in the face that normal life presents her with is a chance to experience a reality she has always longed for.  It’s therefore hilarious.

I had never really been aware of the show until a friend told me that I reminded him of one of the main characters.  Furious that I had been caught out by not having a watched a show that came up in casual conversation, I then searched out the programme to get myself up to speed.  However, by this point, I had forgotten which character he had said.  But, when I asked him to remind me, he had since changed his mind and stated that I reminded him of the librarian in Bob’s Burgers, which wasn’t at all helpful.  Though it was probably very accurate.

Therefore, my viewing of this show is peppered with me constantly wondering which character I am.  As such, the conclusion I am slowly arriving at is that I am all of them.  In Titus, Kimmy’s failed actor/singer roommate, I can see a constant need for attention and some incredible laziness.  In Kimmy Schmidt herself, there’s a bit of naivety and childlike wonder at basic things (as well as getting them horribly wrong).  Add to that the cynicism of Lillian and the snobbery of Jacqueline and it would seem I spend each episode thinking about myself.  Holding a gun to my head, which is something I do sometimes to force myself into decisions (try it), I would have to plump for Jacqueline as my favourite character.  Her withering put downs, disdain for human relationships and ruthless ambition make her an unrivalled hero.  But all the characters’ lines mercilessly ridicule our views on gender, wealth, relationships, work and so many other things that the gun really has been necessary.

My mind keeps coming back to the question as to whether a show like this could ever be made in the UK.  New York is the perfect backdrop for the tale of a grown woman having her childhood expectations destroyed one after the other.  So wouldn’t London be a perfect equivalent?  Perhaps the Brits are too dour to roll with the punchlines that shine through the script in a constant onslaught.  Perhaps nobody would want to speak to Kimmy and she’d be reduced to sitting under a cash machine asking for spare change when people are only clutching wads of ten pound notes.  The world of Kimmy is tragic, but filled with hope, so it might really only be in New York that this could ever take place.

I should close with a comment on the closing titles, but this is on Netflix, and the next show autoplays with mere seconds to abort, so it would seem I’ve been too busy getting sucked unwillingly into the next episode to notice.

BoJack Horseman

So far in my life, I have failed to give anyone a decent description of the concept behind BoJack Horseman; everyone claims it doesn't make any sense.  And now that the fourth series has snuck into Netflix, I will be repeating that failure in this blog.

Imagine a world where some people are animals.  Most things about this world are the same as ours.  There are humans and they have lives.  But in their lives are other people who are dogs or cats or horses.  BoJack is one of these horses.  And, because some animals behave in certain ways (fish live in water, dogs bark at vacuum cleaners, flies fly) so too do these characters.

If you're not thinking "Wait, what?!" by this point, in the appropriate southern Californian accent of course, then read on.  Our hero is a washed-up actor whose 90s sitcom projected him into the big time, only for his ego and insecurities to drive him into has-been status.  Yet we root for BoJack, as he embodies our own fragile sense of value, and laziness about most things.

The stellar voice cast alone should be an indicator of the show's quality.  Unlike adult cartoons where everything must end as it began, the characters' stories intertwine and move on.  And adult this is, with drug binges and overdoses featuring, not to mention the strange need throughout to imagine how all these different animals have sex in a world where interspecies dating is perfectly acceptable (but that might just be me).

While the animation takes a while to get used to, as it's not that pretty, and the pace of the script can seem relentless, as gags are packed in at a mile a minute, it's the subtle and not-so-subtle touches to the flashbacks that I always remember.  Sure, the 90s heyday of Horsin' Around (the cheesy sitcom where BoJack plays a horse that takes in three orphans) is lampooned.  But even 2007 is exposed for the load of old tosh it really was.  The most cunning stroke every time is the sarcastic soundtrack especially produced for each period.  Listen out for it and ask yourself if this is the first time you’ve ever noticed the lyrics to songs used in TV and that they have secretly been trolling you all along.

I've read this back, then, and it still makes no sense.  Rest assured I have done the programme no justice.  But trust me, it's worth watching.

Vikings

So that’s another series of Game Of Thrones into and out of our lives, and now we face an uncertain wait for more episodes that can feed our Westeros addiction.  Where will we get dragons from?  With all of that in mind, I’ve turned to the show that most closely resembles it and can help fill that gap.  But that’s not to say the show isn’t fantastic in its own right.  I’m talking about Vikings, which is one of Amazon’s flagship pieces of content and sometimes shown on the History Channel as well if you like that sort of thing.

While the scale of earlier series is smaller and more intimate, this closely follows the life stages of the show’s charismatic and enigmatic (basically, multi-matic) hero: Ragnar Lothbrok.  Played with such deft touches by Travis Fimmel, you are drawn into rooting for whatever it is he wants to pursue: power, fame, glory.  He’s selfish, but you want to be his best friend.  All around him, a supporting cast build up an ancient society in full, with all elements of Viking civilisation explored.  But the action doesn’t stop in Scandinavia, with scenes of action in later series happening simultaneously in Wessex, Northumbria, Paris and Spain.  For any linguistic geeks, Old English and Old French abounds, with the dialogue switching between modern English and impenetrable dead languages, depending on whose perspective we are being given.  What’s more, when any of the Viking characters are speaking, they all have charming Swedish/Norwegian accents that make everything sound playful and mystic all at once.

Each episode has enough of an underlying risk of sex and/or violence, though early battle scenes can be forgiven for being not much more than lines of men facing each other and waving swords.  It’s the intention that counts when you consider how the series and characters develop.

I do have some unanswered questions though.

What exactly do they do on their longboats when travelling around Europe?  I can barely sit still for two hours on an Easyjet flight to Seville, and that’s with snacks, a book and some headphones.  These guys just had an oar each.

Who does all their hair?  Vikings, it seems, were the first hipsters.  There are topknots, top-plaits, fresh fades and some cracking beards, not to mention the tattoos.  I freely admit to growing out some hair and shaving other bits in order to be more Viking.  I haven’t, however, tattooed the sides of my head, but you never know.

And, can Floki stop doing his annoying laugh?

From the atmospheric chanting of the title sequence, each episode is a full immersion into a culture so different to our own, it’s hard to believe that the former ever contributed to begetting the latter.  The show is not afraid to do away with core characters and to bring in brand new ones that totally change the landscape.  There may not really be anything supernatural about it, but not everything needs dragons.