As the dust settles from the 2020 Emmy Awards, we're tipping 2021 to be a big year for HBO/BBC series I May Destroy You — the brainchild of 32-year-old British actor, director, writer and producer Michaela Coel.
Having already generated significant buzz in the US and UK, where it premiered in June, it finally landed on Australian screens in September, via Binge and Foxtel On Demand.
Benjamin Law reckons it's worth the wait, tweeting that it's "one of those shows [that is] so staggeringly good, it upends the parameters of what you expect from TV altogether".
Who is Michaela Coel?
Like Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who came from seemingly-out-of-nowhere to take over the 2019 Emmy Awards, Coel's path to small-screen acclaim starts with a one-woman semi-autobiographical play (though Coel's play predates Fleabag).
Coel's 2012 play — Chewing Gum Dreams — drew on elements of her own life, growing up as the child of Ghanaian immigrants in a social housing estate in Hackney in London.
Coel developed and performed the play while studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and it eventually made its way to the UK's National Theatre for a sold-out run in 2014.
Then in 2015, Coel adapted the play into the TV series Chewing Gum, for the UK's Channel 4.
In the series, Coel plays Tracey Gordon, a 20-something woman living on a council estate with her religious mother, desperate to lose her virginity.
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Chewing Gum won Coel fame, critical acclaim and two BAFTA awards for acting and writing — though she later revealed the racist treatment she'd experienced and witnessed while making the series.
To really get to know Coel, we recommend this E. Alex Jung profile in Vulture Magazine.
I haven't seen Chewing Gum, but she still seems familiar …
In the three years between Chewing Gum and I May Destroy You, Coel appeared in the USS Callister episode of Black Mirror, the Netflix musical Been So Long and the BBC2/Netflix show Black Earth Rising.
I May Destroy You sounds like a horror film — what is it about?
Content warning: this series includes graphic depictions and discussions of sexual assault.
In the first episode of I May Destroy You, we meet Arabella (Coel): a social-media-famous writer who, distracting herself from a frustrated attempt to meet a deadline for a novel draft, goes for a drink with a friend.
The next day she finds herself — in a haze — back at her writing, but she begins to realise that her drink was spiked the night before, and that she's been raped.
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Across 12 half-hour episodes, the series follows the unfolding aftermath for Arabella — as she tries to piece together the night and assault, and works with police (Sarah Niles and Mariah Gale) to find the perpetrator — and a therapist (Andi Osho), to process the event.
Joining Arabella's journey are her closest friends Terry (Weruche Opia) and Kwame (Paapa Essiedu), and as the series progresses, the show expands out into a complex exploration of consent, trauma, race, friendship and social media.
Is this based on a real story?
Loosely, yes.
I May Destroy You is an exploration of Coel's own drug-facilitated sexual assault — which happened when she was writing the second season of Chewing Gum in 2016.
Delivering the 2018 MacTaggart Lecture — the first Black woman to ever give the keynote address at the Edinburgh International Television Festival — she spoke about her path to writing, her experiences making Chewing Gum, and also described the assault.
In a speech that called for more transparency in the screen industry, she told the shocked room:
Coel has spoken about how she was denied creative control over Chewing Gum; but after turning down a $US1 million ($1.38 million) deal with Netflix, she secured complete control over I May Destroy You as the series' writer, executive producer, co-director and star.
It's on Binge, but should I be bingeing it?
Probably not.
The content is often devastating (the heart can only take so much!), plus Coel intended for the episodes to be released and watched weekly.
As she told Screen Daily: "Just look at what the word [binge] means — when you binge food, you barely taste it and it's a hedonistic rush. You don't get to chew and enjoy the flavour. You should let it go down, wait for the next bite."
Interestingly, when asked for a comment on the delay on the show reaching our shores, Binge executive director Alison Hurbert-Burns said:
What do the reviews say?
To say I May Destroy You is critically acclaimed would be selling it short.
Bolu Babalola in a feature about Coel in Paper Magazine wrote that I May Destroy You is "this year's TV show of the year … Her storytelling is sharp, thoroughly formed and vibrant, intricately elegant in the way it takes us from light to dark".
Nonny Onyekweli in Slate wrote that "I May Destroy You centres black female, queer, and immigrant voices and depicts with nuance the multifaceted aspects of sexual abuse, assault, and exploitation in a manner rarely shown on television".
The New Yorker's Doreen St Felix wrote that: "Toward the end of the series, some of its daring tonal ambiguity is lost, as plotlines are coerced into social commentary. But at its best this show is abrasively psychological; it is, as all good art can be, "triggering," because it sounds and feels and moves the way we do."
While the show is dark, it's also buoyed by Coel's humour and performance, excellent music (the first episode even features our very own Sampa the Great!), and a popping visual palette.
Will there be more?
Coel told The Hollywood Reporter: "I don't want to give anything away. But I think when you see the final episode, you'll know."
Whatever the future holds, Coel is sure to continue making incisive, bonkers, beautiful work.
OK — I've binged it all, I'm feeling raw and emotional, what do I watch now?
Unfortunately, Chewing Gum isn't currently available to stream in Australia.
But there is a bunch of recent, critically acclaimed, auteurist TV shows that might satisfy that Coel-itch, including Fleabag (Amazon Prime), Ramy Youssef's Ramy (Stan), Issa Rae's Insecure (Binge and Foxtel On Demand), and Donald Glover's Atlanta (Binge and Foxtel On Demand).
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMicGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTA5LTIzL2ktbWF5LWRlc3Ryb3kteW91LXR2LXNlcmllcy1oYm8tYmJjLW1pY2hhZWxhLWNvZWwtY29uc2VudC10cmF1bWEvMTI2NDAxNTjSASdodHRwczovL2FtcC5hYmMubmV0LmF1L2FydGljbGUvMTI2NDAxNTg?oc=5
2020-09-22 19:02:00Z
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