May TV shows

[dolorosa_12]

We finished six shows this month, and as always it was a good spread of genres, with a higher proportion of really good quality stuff than usual. The shows in question were:

Beef, a black comedy in which two strangers' reactions to their road rage incident spirals to ever-increasing degrees out of control. It's brilliantly written and acted, covering everything from Millennial ennui to the intergenerational tensions of East Asian immigrants and their Asian-American children (the two main characters are Korean-American and Chinese-American, respectively), and incredibly over-the-top (the situation swiftly becomes ludicrous), but with a strong underlying sense of truth. I think it will resonate most with you if you are a) a Millennial and b) incredibly, incredibly angry.

The Power, an adaptation of Naomi Alderman's dystopian science fiction novel in which all people assigned female at birth suddenly develop the ability to shoot electricity out of their hands, and the way this slowly — and then very quickly — upends the social organisation of the whole world. The first season of the TV show is 10 episodes and is still incomplete in terms of covering the content of the book, so it's a lot slower and more ponderous in terms of letting the story unfold, and I feel in some ways that this has led to a degree of subtlety which isn't really present in the book, which is as blunt as an anvil to the head in terms of what it's saying about power, and its connection to the ability to mete out terrible violence. In some ways, though, this greater breathing space has allowed the show to explore things that Alderman was either uninterested in, or didn't have the space to cover, such has how this newfound power affects trans and intersex people.

The latest season of Miss Scarlet and the Duke, a series in which a police officer and woman private detective solve crimes together in Victorian London. This third season is to my mind an improvement on the previous two, since a big part of it hinges on its assumption that the two title characters are a bantering couple whose bickering hides their sexual attraction, whereas I never felt they got this balance right (he just seemed downright rude and dismissive towards her) — until this season. This is not a serious show, and we use it as a sort of palate cleanser if we've been watching something more emotionally wrenching.

Yellowjackets, which I felt came close to jumping the shark this season. The flashback timeline in the 1990s following a teenage girls' football/soccer team try to survive in the wilderness after a plane crash is still told well, but I'm less impressed by the present-day timeline in which the various traumas they experienced after the crash finally escalate and start to ruin the lives they've carefully built. I really think American showrunners need to start thinking on a smaller scale, and trying to write stories that can be told in six episodes, or ten, rather than assuming they'll have endless seasons in which to stretch things out. This could have been complete — and exquisite — in one season, but it's beginning to feel bloated.

Succession, about which I don't feel I need to say much, since the internet is awash with thinkpieces. Suffice it to say that I felt it was a satisfying conclusion, that most characters got what they deserved, but not all, which — given that it's a show that invites viewers to wallow in the grimy mean-spiritedness of Murdoch-esque media billionaires, insincere American politicians, and startup tech bros — is probably pretty true to life.

Colin from Accounts, the dark horse favourite of this month. It's an Australian romantic comedy miniseries in which the two main characters — both kind of hopeless people in various ways — have a meet cute in which she flashes him while walking down the street, causing him to accidentally hit a dog with his car, they both end up responsible for caring for the injured dog, and chaos ensues. I thoroughly enjoyed this — the writing is great, the actors have fantastic chemistry, the secondary characters are wonderful, and the Sydney setting was exactly what I needed, since I've been missing the city terribly since I left at the end of April.

These shows between them are definitely an argument — if ever one was needed — for the importance of TV writers, and the need to compensate them fairly for their work.