Master Of None

We’re all going through tough times.  Some of us are still dealing with symptoms of Parks & Recreation withdrawal, even though we finished this delicious sitcom over two years ago.  How I still envy my friend who made her first watch last (after following my recommendation to take on this particular boxset in the first place) by rationing the episodes over time and taking care to watch each several times before moving onto the next one.  What we both had in common, though, was only discovering Leslie Knope and her Pawnee pals many years after the show had finished broadcasting.  Such is the power of late boxset discovery.  If we really make an effort, there’s every chance we can get through all the TV shows ever made.  Surely that’s something to cherish on the deathbed.  But, in keeping with my penchant for coming to things late, I recently spotted the two seasons of Master Of None on Netflix.  For a reason that at this point was unknown to me, this show was all the rage back when it appeared between 2015 and 2017.  Aziz Ansari was striking out on his own, leaving behind Tom Haverford whose teachings about Treat Yoself Day (nothing beats his and Donna’s mantra: fine leather goods) and hilarious expressions live on in memories I recall on a regular basis.  I recall awards buzz and maybe even awards wins that I am too lazy to look up.  Let’s be honest, you’re dying to hear what I thought, so let’s proceed.

Master Of None at first appears to be gentle viewing.  It’s amusing but doesn’t bend over backwards to provide lols.  There’s narrative tension, but it doesn’t necessarily sensationalise itself to produce drama.  Yet, you care.  And that’s because Ansari as Dev Shah is a rather likeable everyman.  A New York-based millennial reaching the point in adult life when you’ve got to ask yourself some questions about your career, your relationships and your dreams if you’re not already on the conveyor belt of generic lifestyle steps that starts with engagement and ends in babies, Dev dabbles in acting.  His real passion is saved for eating food that needs to be as delicious as possible.

The first season settles, with some wobbling, into a meandering pace, dealing in turn with such issues as parenthood, having foreign parents, ageing, dating morals (would you pursue a married lover?) and representations of Indians in the media.  There’s a universality to some of this, but the frank examination of America’s relationship with certain ethnic heritages delivers refreshing and challenge thought provocation, all while keeping within the show’s friendly style.  It’s part social comment, part whimsy.  A storyline casually emerges as Dev’s relationship with the charming Rachel (Noël Wells) progresses thanks mostly to her inability to be offended by his jokes, creating a new layer of jeopardy as we will these lovers to make it together.

Series two has a more experimental feel.  The action shifts to Italy (for pasta making), while episodes freewheel boldly with their own style.  There’s black and white, flashbacks, montages and an assembly of loosely interconnected stories that shines a light on the experience of newer New York immigrants, contrasting it against Dev’s own attitudes as someone born in the USA.  He’s as self-entitled as the child of any developed country, but this constantly has him at odds with his more pious Indian parents (played by his real-life mum and dad).  A new love story emerges, and you’ll track its star-crossing with the same anxiety you might have found elicited by Normal People.  Master Of None dares itself not to give you what you think you want.

I took to taking in my episodes in the bath, something which ramped up when I solved my heatwave woes by filling the bath with cold water and immersing myself at various points during the day when my own sweat was causing me to slip off my laptop keyboard.  Dev and his pals quickly feel like old friends, even though some of their lines can be slightly mumbled.  Every so often, we’re treated to a bit of Orange Is The New Black’s Danielle Brooks stealing scenes as Dev’s agent while Eric Wareheim’s Arnold grew on me over time despite my initial resistance.  Lena Waithe comes into her own in the Thanksgiving episode (which she wrote), offering a sensitive telling of a story we see represented all too rarely.

Master Of None doesn’t necessarily make you feel strong feelings.  It’s subtler than that.  It champions what you might otherwise miss and doesn’t care about what you’re used to seeing.  It’s playful throughout and therefore an undeniably nice watch.  It made me think and it made me feel and, if any more comes along, I’ll definitely be pressing play.

Elite (Élite)

Rarely do I start on a new boxset and then proceed to watch only that boxset until I have devoured every episode in existence.  Normally it’s a case of adding another show into the mix, alternating its position in my evening viewing schedule (it’s now the law to stay in) among some of my favourite themes for programming: post-apocalyptic shows featuring zombies (The Walking Dead, Kingdom), adult animation (South Park), offensive comedy (Nighty Night – now on iPlayer here) or things about sport that aren’t the same as actually watching sport (Last Chance U).  But from the very first minute of Elite, I couldn’t stop until I had devoured the whole lot.  Granted, it ticked one of my other favoured categories: things set in schools (Sex Education).  But it also seems to be striking out a new theme which is wreaking havoc with my paranoia about what my neighbours can see through my windows: shows with a whole lot of f*cking (a bit like Game Of Thrones roulette where naked body parts could be splayed all over the screen at a moment’s notice).  More on this later.

But first, what is Elite about?  Well, for starters it’s nothing to do with the liberal elite, ruining everyone’s lives by trying to create a society that’s fairer and better for everyone.  It’s about the privileged teenage children of wealthy Spaniards who enjoy the fanciest education that money can buy.  This all takes place at Las Encinas (which Google Translate reveals to mean holm oaks – no idea), a swanky, fee-paying school with its own bridge.  After three seasons, I’m fairly sure it’s in Madrid, but we can assume this is a generic Spanish town or city.  Characters do pop off to Asturias, which seems too far a jaunt from the capital.  Pupils avail themselves of its ample opportunities: swimming in its pool, arguing in its corridor, being disruptive in its one classroom, ogling its ugly trophy, calling its teachers by their first names, being very sexually active and occasionally murdering one another.

This would all be boring if we didn’t add some tension, so our first series opens with three scholarship kids entering Las Encinas for the first time, their new, improved educations funded as an act of charity after their old poor school fell down, on them.  They’re about to find out its not so easy rubbing shoulders academically with the rich and privileged.  But don’t worry, everyone is beautiful.

Each season’s arc builds to a climactic terrible crime but foreshadows this throughout with police procedural flash forwards in a way that, while narratively a little clunky, makes you unable to resist your desire to know immediately how it all ends.  Subsequent series also build on and compound their predecessors’ misdemeanours, lending the whole thing a perverse credibility that couldn’t be achieved if brand new adventures had to be dreamt up.  And there we have it: soap-operatic trashiness, elevated by tension you’ll be powerless to resist.  Each evening, when you log off working from home, you’ll be excited to return to Las Encinas.

And what a world it is.  Diversity is everything for these young people, with a head-on tackling of European society’s response to Islam.  Siblings Omar and Nadia struggle to balance their academic and romantic pursuits with their Palestinian parents’ expectations, which mostly involve worrying about who will staff their grocery shop.  Seeing as there almost never seems to be a customer in sight and most of the employee labour goes into rearranging the lemons one by one, they could probably chill out a bit.  Sexuality is also enthusiastically box-ticked from a diversity perspective, with fans of boy-on-boy loving richly rewarded, as well as frequent shout outs to the polyamory community.  Add in the straights, and you’ll see what I mean about a whole lot of f*cking, in all its available flavours.

For language fans, there’s every imaginable swear word, often in the same sentence.  No sooner has someone begun an exchange with “hola” than they are following up that statement with “joder puta madre coño” in such rapid succession that the subtitlists get overwhelmed and just put the F word the whole time.  But this reflects the extent to which this really is adult stuff.  Aged sixteen and seventeen, no known laws seem to prevent the Elite crew from getting up to all sorts: drug-dealing, clubbing, easy access to alcohol.  The Inbetweeners this ain’t.  Elite builds its own sexy mythology around axioms you will willingly accept: Glee Warbler school uniforms look sexy, it doesn’t matter that Samu is shorter than all his girlfriends, Las Encinas’ coursework is farcical at best.  The only idiosyncrasy that bothers me is that nobody seems to kiss with tongues, which makes the graphic love-making scenes fall somewhere flat when all the naked characters are only pecking each other on the lips.  That’s right: I’ll buy everything else Elite serves, but the illusion is shattered for me when they don’t kiss properly.  Now I can see why my neighbours might think I’m a pervert.

Having raced through Elite, I’m now bereft to return to a reality where I am no longer part of the gang, especially if this is a world where summer Love Island is cancelled.  While animosity between the characters dominates earlier episodes, our alumnos go through so much that new relationships form as they develop and change their prejudices, accommodating the new individuals injected into proceedings each season.  You’ll warm to them, even as they murder each other.  So, if you’ve got some lockdown nights to while away, and you’re confident your TV screen isn’t overlooked by minors or curtain twitchers, lose yourself in the world of Elite and join me in the impatient wait for a fourth season.  Joder.

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem And Madness

Let’s discuss captivity.  It certainly seems like the right time for it.  The UK has been under lockdown since the start of this week, and I’ve been on enforced working from home for over a fortnight.  No gym, no haircuts, no socialising and no food in the supermarkets: welcome to my first pandemic.  But, in all this, perspective must remain a constant companion.  I have a job and a home I can do it from, so things could be much worse.  I live in a wealthy country with an infrastructure that might just about be able to cope (if we all stay in), which is more than can be said for billions of other people around the world.  All I must undergo is some temporary hardship.  I must confine myself to my brand-new new build.  I forego physical contact with all friends and family.  But thanks to the internet, I have unlimited entertainment and education at my fingertips.  I can and shall occupy myself while counting those blessings.  And it is indeed this same blessed internet (and its bedfellow, Netflix) that has brought something incredibly entertaining to the UK’s captive audience in recent weeks: Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.

It's occupied our number one spot for some time now, so, like a rampant infection, it was only natural that I too should fall to its appeal.  In fact, those seven episodes formed something of an uncharacteristically irresistible binge for me.  I devoured them all in a matter of days.  I suppose I do have more spare time as I can’t go outside (beyond my single government-approved exercise window per day – thanks gammon-in-charge Bozza), but I just had to know what was going to happen next and what possible conclusion it could all draw to.  The colon in its title is a pointless adornment; they had me at Tiger King.  Big felines have long filled me with terror, despite being a flag-waving cat person from a cat family, with only indifference for dogs and mostly antipathy for their owners (with many exceptions).  As a child, I had a recurring nightmare of being trapped in Chessington World Of Adventures, desperate to drag my family away from the lion enclosure before they emitted deadly roars – yes, I was more scared of their barks than their bites.  A recent trip to South Africa saw me taken to a lion park by cousins I hadn’t seen for 27 years.  Rather than try and front a brave-man act as the pride chased our vehicle to the exit, I totally lost my cool and even refused to open my door (or take off my seatbelt) once we were all clear of the safety barrier.  I love wildlife, but will from now on only encounter the dangerous ones via a screen on Our Planet or Seven Worlds, One Planet.

However, I can’t resist the constant tension of some stupid human sitting next to a deadly tiger or lion without any protection beyond their own sense of ego.  It makes for a fascinating Louis Theroux documentary (2011’s America’s Most Dangerous Pets) which features scenes that still haunt me, mostly because Theroux was so visibly uncomfortable around dangerous animals.  And rightly so.  Here we are, years later, dealing with the same character at the heart of the same subject: Joe Exotic (Schreibvogel-Maldonado-Passage).  If the ever-present threat of a mauling isn’t compelling enough, our Joe has all the qualities that render any viewer physically incapable of wrestling their eyes from the screen.  Redneck and proud of it, Exotic boasts a peroxided mullet, cowboy tassels and a multitude of other adornments that scream attention-grabbing.  Some piercings dangle sadly, his middle-aged skin’s elasticity the victim of smoking, sunshine and drugs, yet we can only imagine the state of his Prince Albert as he takes us through his collection of weighty padlocks for attaching to it on an impromptu tour of his very untidy bedroom.  Part The Office’s David Brent (for the music videos alone), part S-Town’s John B. McLemore (only with a manifestly lower IQ), Exotic is the gun-totin’ ringmaster of an Oklahoma petting zoo.  Only these aren’t bunnies and ponies, these are lions and tigers (and their curious dual-heritage offspring, ligers).

Guests are protected by nothing more than Exotic’s own self-belief – and it’s powerful stuff.  It convinces him to run for state governorship and for president.  It guides his acoustic tastes – the only music he likes to listen to is his own.  It propels him to celebrate a three-man marriage in a very conservative state.  It renders him impervious to animal rights groups that advise that maybe you shouldn’t breed tiger cubs simply for sale as pets, or for stroking by punters until they’re too old to be cute and are euthanised, that you shouldn’t feed them out-of-date supermarket meat and roadkill, that you shouldn’t confine them to cages.  Thus arises the key narrative of the documentary series: Exotic’s primal rivalry with fellow big pussy fan and arch-nemesis, that lovely flower garland-wearing, slow-cycling Carole Baskin down in Florida (“Hey all you cool cats and kittens”).  She mandates that these animals shouldn’t be petted, or bred for petting, or kept in captivity at all.  Running a sanctuary for rescue animals, she inspires her social followers to join her in pressuring Exotic and his pals to right their wrongs.

She might sound angelic, but one of the most delicious parts of Tiger King is not knowing who’s worse.  Rumours circle Baskins like lions stalking prey.  What happened to her very wealthy first husband?  How and why did he disappear?  Why didn’t his family get anything?  Are the rumour true that she fed his body to her tigers?  Most evil of all, she runs her park using unpaid volunteers only (Exotic pays his in petty cash and trailer-park living) and masks her origins in captive cat breeding, though she is very open about her incredibly ironic cat allergies.  In her tit-for-tat conflict with Exotic, you sit there paralysed about who to root for.  The answer is neither.

Instead, you can dismiss them both on the quality that unites them: their complete lack of taste.  From leopard-print leggings (well, leopard-print everything) to neck tattoos, big cat people are drawn to anything tacky.  It evidences their pursuit of status: you can swing no bigger dick than having the king of the jungle as a house pet.  Most sinister of these egos is Bhagavan “Doc” Antle.  Proving correct the theory you should never trust a man who has a soul patch and a pony tail, polygamist Antle is not (yet, at least) directly embroiled in the feud-propelled crimes at the heart of Tiger King, merely commenting as an onlooking character witness.  Yet his passion for attention drives some of the best humour in this otherwise serious matter, directing the documentary team to feature him only in the most flattering of set-ups.  His ego is more fragile than the tigers’ natural habitats.

I’ll finish up by considering the most compelling moment in the whole thing.  I was going to focus on the footage of Exotic getting dragged around a cage by the foot after some cologne on his shoe prompts an aggressive reaction from one of his big cats.  In a split second, the underlying tension bursts to the surface and we are seconds from death.  Or there’s the moment his campaign manager witnesses a colleague die, with his reaction captured on CCTV.  This will chill you.  But the winning moment is in fact the footage of “businessman” James Garretson thinking he looks cool while doing water sports.  For some reason, there is nothing more compelling than a fat man with a bad haircut on a jetski.

Let’s be honest, Tiger King is fairly exploitative, delivering up white trash on a stick, but I couldn’t get enough of it.  Some more intriguing details are cruelly glanced over: what exactly happened to Saff’s arm, why does Exotic have a knee support, why is John Finlay topless for most of his interviews, what happened in Jeff Lowes’ Las Vegas petting van etc?  Instead, way is made for endless footage of big cats receiving questionable treatment, enough that you eventually feel almost disappointed that there aren’t more scenes of humans being attacked.  Not because you wish ill on any member of the public, but because these big cat people are clearly the most dangerous predators in the animal world.  Maybe it’s time for them to experience some of this captivity first hand.

Mindhunter

Everyone was telling me to watch Mindhunter.  So I watched it and now we’re going to hear all about what I thought of it.  Only it wasn’t as simple as that.  The people in the office that were going on about it were easily ignored.  I’m well known for not really being a listener, so this was within character.  It was, in fact, a chance encounter with the Netflix trailer for season two that really sold me into the show.  I’ve talked before about how navigating the overwhelming choice on Netflix can be daunting, leading to a paralysed state where no real commitment can be made, and you end up spending your whole evening browsing.  Before you know it, you’ve got to get in the bed and set the alarm so you don’t forget to go back to your office for typing emails into a computer the next morning.

But if you hover a show for too long on Netflix, the trailer autoplays.  The alarming eruption of voices has often led me to suspect I am undergoing a home invasion, but I am now used to this and have finally agreed with London Metropolitan Police that we will leave each other alone.  In the case of the Mindhunter trailer, suspenseful music immediately filled my sparsely decorated new build living room.  The screen of my massive telly conveyed a past decade of American life.  All of this was soaked through with a quickly gripping sense of mystery: the story was clearly of a serial killer in late seventies, early eighties Atlanta targeting African-American children while the institutionally racist law enforcement, er, institutions ignored calls for them to investigate.  I’m not normally one for grisly crime investigations, but the added tension of strained race relations promised more intense drama (see post on Dear White People) so this, coupled with some clearly very high production values, saw me dive in.

But what started as a dive turned into a slow, uncomfortable, duty-bound crawl as Mindhunter shifted awkwardly under my expectations of what it would actually be.  Let’s get this out of the way first: the Atlanta murders are only really about 40% of the second series, and to get to that I had to get through the first series, where they are 0% of the content.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying I can now only enjoy things that are to do with the Atlanta child murders, but I want to acknowledge that Netflix’s trailer mis-sold the show.  Nevertheless, I put my thumb-distracting smartphone in a different room and committed to the first few episodes.  But I couldn’t work out where things were going.  We had some FBI people forming an unlikely partnership, going around training local police, but then kind of starting to interview serial killers (before the term had been coined) in prisons and then sort of, you know, getting into running a whole study to understand more about the behaviour of violent criminals.  Mindhunter gets into a great stride, but it takes its time getting there.  This was competing in my TV-viewing time with masterpieces like Seven Worlds, One Planet and I’m A Celebrity (also obviously a masterpiece), so I found it harder and harder to prioritise such heavy-going fare.

After a bit of a gap, though, I found myself on lengthy plane and train journeys during my America trip and, with nothing else to do, was able to focus on subsequent episodes downloaded to my phone, finally hooking myself in to get totally mindhunted.  And that’s the first thing about Mindhunter: its terrible name.  The cast don’t actually go out hunting for minds.  A more apt title would be Crimesolver or Violentoffenderinterviewer, but both of those sound much naffer than Mindhunter.  But where there was a lack of effort in thinking up a title, there is an excess of doing a good job when it comes to most other elements of the production.  The period setting is executed masterfully – parts of it are slightly akin to a latter-day suburban Mad Men, and, like that show, the attitudes of the time are held true, rather than filtering history’s bigotry through a more palatable lens to make modern audiences feel good (I’m looking at you, Downton Abbey).  People smoke constantly, there is little to no airport security, and seatbelts look distinctly optional – ah, the good old days.

Let’s meet, then, the chap who I think is the actual Mindhunter: Holden Ford.  He’s played by Jonathan Groff and he speaks with the same pitch of voice at all times, which makes his lines hypnotic, but brings to life Ford’s untapped genius as he begins to realise the scope of what his work can achieve: if they learn to profile killers, they can solve murders before further victims fall.  The grumpy cop to his wide-eyed cop is Bill Tench and what unites them is they both have really bad shirts.  Our pair are joined by Dr Wendy Carr who seems to perform the role of some sort of line manager stroke unenthusiastic office-bound cheerleader, sending her chaps out to record interviews she can listen to.  All three are drawing on their experiences at a certain school of acting in their performances: the “I just smelled a fart” approach.  Indeed, each actor’s talent shines through as they create their characters, but the distasteful and serious nature of their conversations and relationships make it look like someone has just keffed in their airspace the whole time.  This extends to almost all the supporting cast, with the exception of the serial killers they meet in various jails.  There are some real household names that I won’t spoil, but you can tell each performer is having a smashing time in the role.

As we progress into series two, a lot starts to go on.  Story strands spread outwards like planets in an ever-expanding universe.  While everything that unfolds about the Atlanta child murders is compelling, we’re also getting deep into Tench’s own problems with his adopted son and very curly-haired wife (with in-marriage dialogue that perfectly captures how things can get so much worse when you only say the wrong thing to each other).  In addition, Carr’s relationship goes under the microscope in order to allow us a better understanding of her mode of operation (which is refreshingly unusual).  Mindhunter treats its viewers intelligently, allowing real focus on each area rather than jumping about like a dance video.  The whole pace can tend to luxuriate in its own quality, as if demanding we drink in the awesome settings, the American nostalgia and the faces of cast members who look like they’re trying to work out who just did that terrible fart.

Season two has left me wanting more and a new TV-viewing approach has evolved to keep up with historical references.  It’s called the Google-along and it’s something you might already have found yourself doing with The Crown.  Each time something comes up that you’ve never heard of, call upon your search engine of choice to cover the gaps in your historical context.  But don’t forget to look at the TV screen too, otherwise you’ll miss this unusual show as it defies your categorisations and expectations.  Focus on the mindhunting.

Black Summer

I’m not sure why I’m doing this now, as Black Summer dropped on Netflix back in April and, as with all zombie content, I had to watch it there and then.  However, something about the title seems appropriate as we reach the back end of August.  No, it’s not a spin-off of Dear White People, whose third season has just launched, the viewing of which I am saving for when I’ve bought a big telly for my new flat.  My choice is more to do with the tempestuous weather that everyone has been moaning about.  Brits have evolved to be waterproof as it’s almost always raining here, so I’m not sure why one globally warmed day of 38 degrees would lead us to expect constant sunshine until the schools go back.

Summer 2019 is black due to the gathering storm clouds that seem to signal an afternoon shower each day as some part of new European rainy season.  From my office window I can spectate as workers clad optimistically in summer dresses and t-shirts alike sprint across pavements while a good old bucketing-down catches people unawares.  I know I shouldn’t delight in others’ suffering but getting caught in the rain (along with piña coladas) is something that truly affirms your humanity: the planet has literally wetted you.  Plus, I must get it from my father – he used to arrive early to pick me up from my Sixth Form job at Waitrose before I could drive, simply because my shift ended half an hour after closing time and he would derive endless entertainment from watching affluent potential shoppers stride towards the automatic doors, only to respond with outraged incredulity when they were denied entry to their favourite providore and therefore forced to forego a top-up shop consisting mostly of artisan cheese and fine wines.

Let’s make no bones about it: I don’t like summer.  In fact, a zombie apocalypse would probably improve my ability to withstand the aestival months.  I would like to blame London for this.  It’s the worst place in the world when hot, mostly as it was built in Victorian times for the damp climate mentioned above (though, over a hundred years later, they’re still building most of it).  The morning Tube, as unpleasant as it already is, takes on a new level of odorous odiousness: once you’ve spotted one sweat patch, you suddenly realise that everyone’s every crevice is proffering its own wet spot to any casually observing eye.  I may scoff into my novel, but I secretly know that the tickling in the small of my back is from my own sweat beads dashing down my spine to pool and fester in the dark dankness of my crack.  And there it stays for the whole working day and whatever else I am doing with my evening (watching boxsets).

Londoners do two things in the sun.  The first is to find a patch of grass, regardless of its proximity to the heavy traffic of a thoroughfare.  The second is to drink on it.  I don’t enjoy exhaust fumes, nor is it fun to look for somewhere to wee after your third cider, all while wishing you’d put more effort in at the gym as your body stretches before you like some squidgily marshmallow-like dough.  So, once the longest day has gone past, the chill in the air returns and the leaves start to fall, a certain joy fills me as I know we are approaching my favourite time of year.  For some reason, autumn carries with it the most nostalgia.  A breeze can suddenly evoke the exact moment in Year 10 when I realised that other people were stupid.  Factor in the bonus that each autumn brought another year of school: older, wiser, no cooler, but with a new pencil case.  The geek in me loved going back because I enjoyed all the writing and the learning and such.

Which is why some writing is happening now, as a hobby.  I started this blog about TV shows.  I should probably therefore spend a couple of passages actually tackling this week’s programme instead of sharing half-baked yet whimsically charming reflections on the passing of time.  Regular readers will know of my love for the zombie genre.  Fear The Walking Dead remains one of my most-read posts, while The Walking Dead and Korean treasure, Kingdom (킹덤), have of course been covered.  One show I’ve seen some of but not included here is Z Nation, another serial tackling the undead apocalypse.  Its crime?  Too many LOLs  I exist in perpetual fear of a zombie takeover, so I really struggle to see the funny side.  I don’t mind dark humour in the face of annihilation, but the viewer in me wants the genuine threat treated seriously.  The point is, Z Nation misses the mark slightly, but my scant research has revealed the Black Summer is its origin story.  Let’s not hold this against the show though.

Our action opens in an unnamed suburb, some weeks after breakout.  Enough confusion still exists about what is going on, and things are never really explained.  We only glimpse the unfolding of disorientating events through seemingly unrelated characters, all desperately trying to survive (with varying levels of success).  The characterisation has been accused of shallowness, but I’m going to describe it as subtle – you’re deliberately left conflicted about who is good and who is bad, bringing to life the fact that trusting others while the undead chase you can lead either to salvation or betrayal, but you’ll only find out when it’s too late.

The suburban streets in the sunshine take on a claustrophobic air, with peril around every repetitive corner, separated individuals hopelessly searching for loved ones.  Tension builds around rumours of sanctuary, yearning for reunion and the constant risk of zombies and bad people.  The eight episodes stumble forward, arrhythmically switching perspectives and pace, though we culminate in a series of gun battles which are equal parts thrilling climax and video game fodder.

For devotees of the genre, this is a worthwhile watch.  Its fresh-enough approach avoids the pitfalls of what we have seen before, but there’s a sense a bigger vision is lacking behind all the death and destruction.  I’d happily sit through a second series, but the internet is not forthcoming with details of any recommissioning.  I promise you genuine chills from Black Summer’s flesh-eating walkers, especially in the mix of the show’s concerning plausibility.  But I realise the most alarming image you may have from this week’s post is that of my sweaty crack.

Narcos

In a recent survey of one person (me) I asked (myself) what’s the second most Netflixiest show after Orange Is The New Black?  One hundred percent of respondents were unanimous: Narcos.  So here we are, years after the third and final season was released on Netflix: you, reading all my silliness, and me, looking for attention while I find my (sarcastic) voice as a writer.  Thank you for humouring me.

The decision to click Play Episode on the first instalment of series one was a smug one.  It felt like a grown-up choice.  Rather than something cheesy about high schoolers (Riverdale) or, er, something else cheesy about high schoolers (The Vampire Diaries), this was adult fare: high-quality historical drama, dealing with dealers and distribution around a class A drug.  Not only would I learn more about a social issue, but it would be period-faithful.  It was even a bit foreign.  I couldn’t really get any more cultured unless I sat there reading poetry.  But nobody in the office has ever talked about poetry, so getting a good boxset under my belt was more important.  And I hate poetry (unless it rhymes and is funny).

But who are the Narcos?  There are two sides in our epic battle.  On one hand, we have los narcotraficantes.  The most famous of these is Pablo Escobar, who I only really knew about from various glamorising rap lyrics and a segment in Dark Tourist where the scenes of his crimes can be visited by those enamoured with his ruthless brutality, potentially a result of the glamorising rap lyrics.  Escobar and pals went from petty criminals to major global exporters of cocaine, netting billions of dollars in the process.  Trying to stop them, we have the other narcos: the agents of the DEA, a US agency that puts moustachioed men in hot countries to jog about in the heat with handguns, smoke cigarettes and sport an array of aviator sunglasses.

Thus ensues, over the first two series, an international high-stakes game of cocaine cat and cocaine mouse while our DEA agent heroes close in on Escobar.  But who to root for?  Escobar is cool, because we live in a culture where murder, bribery and corruption are cool.  Wagner Moura’s performance merits immediate viewing.  I especially enjoyed being able to tell how stressed Escobar is in a particular scene based on how heavily he breathes through his nose (and over his moustache).  But you may have been more focused on his attire than his nasal respiration.  Escobar’s outfits in the early nineties are exactly what my dad wore in the early nineties: loose-fitting light denim jeans, white trainers, size large short-sleeved shirts tucked in.  I’m fairly certain my dad wasn’t running a drug cartel, but I do have my suspicions now.

Surely we should prefer the goodies?  Steve Murphy and Javier Peña, however, are far from perfect.  Whether they’re bending the rules, smoking too many fags, womanising or neglecting their families, their drive to end Escobar never lets up.  I’ve seen people give up on a scheduling a meeting with me after just two rearrangements, but these guys happily chase Escobar through jungles, favelas and more jungles with little or no sign of an encouraging annual performance review from the powers that be.  And that’s what compels: the seediness, the corruption, the sweaty stake-outs.  Everyone is humanised, rather than glamorised.  The DEA agents gotta go bad to get Escobar.  Escobar loves his family more than anything (even though his son is super annoying) and who can hate a family man?  Oh, the internal conflict, everybody.

The third season’s focus shifts to a new cartel, and Boyd Holbrook’s absence is felt keenly, as he was our fish out of water by which we navigated the sweltering streets of Medellin.  But the new chase soon draws you in with the same excesses of tension.  The gore is gruesome and relentless, and the sheer wasting of life is distressing enough, but then you realise that this is all based on true stories.  In fact, the documentary elements threaded through to give historical context are all the more harrowing, as archive news footage of real fatalities reminds you that no dramatic gloss can cover up the true horrors of the cartels.

And that was my main question: what’s so good about cocaine?  As someone who routinely goes to bed at 10pm, the allure of this party drug is lost on me.  A former friend did once recommend the white powder, claiming I would want to talk to everybody in a room as a result of taking it, but I explained that that was an affliction I already had.  Anyway, I’m sure all the death and destruction in developing nations is worth it for those who like a little bump of a weekend at their trendy London parties.  No harm done, right?

But I got more from Narcos than just affirming the fact that I’m enough of a handful without any intoxicating substances.  I also seem to have learnt Spanish.  I did do a GCSE in a single year (A*, obviously) in this language back in my sixth form days, so the basics were there, reinforced over the years by pop songs like Despacito.  Narcos is half in Spanish, so get your subtitle eyeballs ready, as there’s plenty of reading.  Somehow, though, I seemed to attune to the Colombian accents after a few episodes, so if anyone does need me to arrange shipments of coca paste from a Latin American rainforest to a Miami nightspot, just give me a call on a massive nineties mobile phone.

Yet more great TV from Netflix?  Well, yes.  Am I embarrassingly late to the party with this one?  Also yes.  Have I answered all the questions I set out to?  I don’t know – I just kind of start bashing these out and see where they end up.  Is Narcos: Mexico a separate programme, or just the fourth series of the same show?  I’m still not sure.  I’m working my way through that as we speak, so let’s stay tuned for a future post.  I’m sure I can find plenty to be silly and sarcastic about.

Sex Education

If you’ve ever wondered where all the ugly jackets in the world have gone, I can now reveal their whereabouts to you.  They’ve been hoarded by the costume department of Sex Education.  Don’t worry, I’m about to say a whole load of nice things about this show, but let’s just dwell on the programme’s aesthetic before we really get into things.  Every character, from an eccentric older patient in an abortion clinic, to the fundamentalist protestors outside, is clad in the sort of coat you’ll remember from embarrassing (actual, not digital) photos from your eighties or nineties childhood (people with childhoods any later shouldn’t really be reading this as I don’t know what to say to them).  The colours clash, the shoulders box up beyond human anatomy, the sleeves tease you with mysteries.  If you’re going to embrace bad taste, though, then you might as well own it.

I’m reminded of a costume hire company in the ski resort of Morzine where I was lucky enough to be taken on a jolly with work.  For our ironic night out, a van load of dated onesies was brought to the chalet and laid out on the pool table; we were invited to make our selections amidst the inescapably recognisable odour of jumble sale.  Our criteria were simple: the more garish, the better.  In these extravagant (and warm) disguises, we could be amplified versions of ourselves, dancing on podiums, recreating the video to I’m A Slave 4 U by Britney Spears or photographing ourselves draped over petrol pumps in the snow.  It was as if the outfits came with added character.  That evening around the pool table is how I imagine jacket selection day during the filming of Sex Education.  These were the same bad-taste onesies, they just had the legs and crotches cut off (thereby making them jackets obviously).

But it works.  Sex Education takes place in a version of Britain where everyone wears these jackets (and a whole host of other eye-catching items).  Moordale Secondary School teems with teens who are at home balancing irony with style in order to create a look and feel that is at once real and yet an enhancement of reality.  The office Netflix chat around the show was universal: everyone should watch it because it’s great.  But the second comment was always a reference to the fact this UK-based comedy-drama seemed to unfold in an American high school transplanted from the USA to South Wales.  Regular readers will know that the high school is one of my favourite settings for TV (see posts on The OC and Teen Wolf) but I would argue that Moordale is actually a mid-Atlantic fusion.  Sure, there are letterman jackets for the swim team and wide corridors filled with big US-style lockers, but these just serve to signpost and facilitate the setting, the relationships and the storylines.  The characters inhabiting this setting are as bloody British as spending two years failing to get a Brexit deal (so let’s please remain).  My school didn’t have a pool, and our shoebox lockers were just places where we forgot a packed lunch of sandwiches over the Easter holidays.

In fact, Moordale Secondary seems to be what we would call a sixth form college.  We’re not told much about its setting – there’s no named town to host us (like Riverdale).  It’s rural, which, based on my Surrey youth, means everything is too far apart to walk and you need your folks to cart you about until you pass your driving test, but the characters dash about in the dark between each other’s homes without too much difficulty.  Why my mind focused on the transportation practicalities is a reflection of my own anxieties, and it’s not interesting for me to write about here, so I don’t even know why you’re reading this bit.  Let’s instead focus on the British countryside looking breath-taking and cinematic – our nation of crap towns hasn’t looked this good on camera since The End Of The F***ing World.

Even that observation isn’t important.  So, now for the main bit: Moordale is packed with a young community of sexually active students whose enthusiasm for fornication (for the most part) is only outstripped by their cluelessness.  Our link into this world is our hero, Otis, whose disgust at sexual acts is at odds with his mum’s occupation: she is a sex therapist, practising what she preaches with a parade of casual (and cringe) lovers.  Played by Gillian Anderson, Dr Jean F. Milburn might know her away around a phallic ornament (the house is dripping in them) but she’s as lost at raising a modern teen as any parent would be.  Nevertheless, her vocation rubs off, with Sex Education’s premise being that her son ends up charging his academic cohort (a delicious piece of jargon, courtesy of my old headmistress) for his own brand of sex therapy.  His virginity is no barrier to imparting his teachings on scissoring, gag reflexes and ejaculation.  And if you’re wincing at those sexual terms, then this isn’t the show for you.  Bonking appears on screen every few minutes, with frank discussion of it filling most of the rest of the time.  Brits are prudishly reserved when it comes to open conversation about slap and/or tickle, but we’re also obsessed with it.  Sex Education treads this balance beautifully, celebrating sexual diversity, inexperience and experimentation in all its silly sloppiness.  After all, it is our vagina (reference to episode five).

Navigating this hormonal onslaught alongside Otis, his fellow students are all a source of constant joy in their own ways.  Rather than box-ticking a series of high school tropes, their genuine uniqueness brings grit and proximity to Sex Education’s colourful costumes.  You root for them all.  Audiences will fall in love with Eric, Otis’s best friend who doesn’t let being average at French horn (not a euphemism) hold back his extravagant wardrobe choices, but I was charmed by Aimee, a member of Moordale’s own Mean Girls, The Untouchables, who finally learns to put herself first.  I also want to mention Lily, not just for her erotic alien fiction, but also her combinations of rollnecks and bumbags.  I can’t leave out Maeve and Jackson either, but I’ll finish on Adam, the bullies-get-bullied bad boy and chest-hairiest teen whose last-episode resolution will either blow you away (literally) or prove correct suspicions you’ll have had since his first appearance.

I haven’t been this saddened by finishing a show since the end of Parks & Recreation, but thank goodness news already abounds of a second series getting commissioned.  If the rumours of 40 million streams are true, then I can just hear the LOLs echoing out around the world.  Get yourself sex educated.  Just don’t focus too much on the jackets.

The Rain (Regnen)

63 posts in and I’ve done my best to balance out American shows with British ones, and even thrown in some Australian (shout out to Summer Heights High), but I’ve been hugely neglectful from a linguistic perspective.  Besides some subtitled Spanish in Fear The Walking Dead, and some other bits and bobs, everything has been an English-language production.  How can I hope to guide people through the world of boxset quality (and boxset trash) if I just stick to my mother tongue?  Given this blog is also dominated by me talking about myself, we should acknowledge that a defining feature of mine, alongside lacking human emotion and laughing too loudly, is my multilingualism.  We’ll go into that in more detail another time, as I know readers are keen to hear about my voyages into French and German.  Instead, the first foreign language show to make it into Just One More Episode is actually Danish.  Readers, I give you The Rain (Regnen, in Danish, but it seems the Danes also just call it The Rain).

And no, this isn’t the 1997 hit my Missy Elliott with brackets after it containing the words Supa, Dupa and Fly.  It’s a real Netflix original production.  English speakers have traditionally shunned foreign-language productions from mainstream consumption.  Subtitles require reading, and reading feels, for some people, too much like trying to watch a book.  The effort required is not given easily, as we Brits are indulged by the rest of the world speaking our language, and are therefore too lazy to make any effort in the other direction.  However, Netflix seems to have versions of all its foreign-language programming dubbed into English.  While this removes a barrier, it adds the new one of lips not matching to sounds.  I’ll happily read thousands of words of subtitles to avoid the distraction of bad dubbing – it can drag down any drama, making it feel like some sort of pan-European lemon Cif advert.  Watching with subtitles has another benefit if you can’t understand the language at hand.  The constant reading requires more attention than just listening, helping to keep those tippy-tappy fingers off your smartphone and your terrible second-screening habits.  So, with full focus, let me transport you to a dystopian Denmark.

As I said in the last paragraph, before heading off on a wild tangent, it’s about the rain.  There’s nothing worse in life than getting soaked in the rain, even though it’s our natural state as Brits.  However, the rain in, er, The Rain, carries a virus.  So, not only do your jeans get damp, not only does wet sock (a fully recognised condition first discovered when you’ve just put on fresh socks and then accidentally tread in your housemates’ shower puddles, requiring a second pair of fresh socks) upset your toes, but you also die a horrific death.  In episode one, at first, the rain is on its way.  We watch through the eyes of our heroine, Simone, as her father cryptically gathers the family from their normal lives to whisk them to safety.  The times he spends saying “there’s no time to explain” is technically a perfectly sufficient period in which to give everyone the full lowdown on what’s occurring.  But that wouldn’t be any fun.  The clouds gather, people get the washing in off the line, and Simone’s family are hunkered down in a conveniently located bunker.

I’m obliged not to give too much away, but most of the action then proceeds six years later.  Simone has raised her little brother, Rasmus, in Fritzl-esque isolation, but how will the siblings cope back in the real world?  As I said with Black Mirror, I love a dystopian future.  In this one, you stay out the rain, you’re chased by people with drones and you end up in a ragtag band of young survivors, the bright colours of whose cagoules are only matched by the strength of their hormonal yearnings for each other.  There’s Jean (which sounds delightfully like Sheen in Danish) who’s all curly hair and glasses, another one with a bad attitude and backwards baseball cap signifying his bad attitude, and also a blonde girl with traintracks, which you don’t see much of these days.  And many more.  Like any young group of Europeans, they squabble, swear and have an open-minded approach to nudity.  They may also be an allegory for how a new generation must clean up after their parents’ mistakes, but I’ll try not to make everything about Brexit…

The whole series carries the tension of a summer BBQ: everyone hopes it’s not going to rain.  Simone seems to be able to navigate around all of Denmark’s rural areas from memory, conveniently coming across further bunkers in order to replenish the group’s stock of cereal bars.  In between, back stories illuminate elements of our characters’ personalities, though the effects of six years in a bunker seem completely overlooked for Simone and Rasmus, but they’re probably busy focusing on the array of threats a post-apocalyptic Denmark offers.

You’ll feel intellectual for consuming a boxset in a different language, though Danish does sound curiously like English with all the effort removed, a sort of aspirated sigh from the back of the throat.  Have fun spotting words that are similar (to go seems to be “go”) while the fun of trying to match the sounds to the subtitles gradually wears off.  As the series went on, I found it harder and harder to remind myself that I didn’t speak Danish, forgetting to read the subtitles as if there had been a sudden comprehension miracle.  Sure, I missed some plot points, but we all know I do this in English anyway.  Turns out I don’t listen, no matter what the language.

Right, so that’s a fourth country of origin added into the fold here, and there’ll be more to come.  Let’s not see the multitude of European tongues as a barrier to union.  Let’s look for what we have in common.  Some people don’t like reading subtitles.  Most people don’t like getting soaked in the rain.  And everyone hates a wet sock.