I don’t think I would have been interested in sticking with the show if it had exclusively been about working our way through a checklist of Arabella’s awful experiences on her forgotten night. They are, for Coel, another way to make you uncomfortable or to make you wonder why one thing makes you uncomfortable and others don’t. Bodies, how they fit together and how they clash, are at the center of things. On every level, there’s a connection between consent and authority over one’s own body and a connection between that and authority over one’s voice.Īnd yes, there’s a lot to parse when it comes to the position-by-position sexuality of the series.
I MAY DESTROY YOU EPISODES SERIES
Over 12 episodes, the series puts Arabella, Terry and Kwame through waves of sex meant to leave you wondering, sometimes second-to-second, position-by-position, how antsy the characters should be, and how antsy we should be, highlighting the different ways consent is not only related to Yes/No issues and the way memory and perspective can turn the innocuous into something insidious. Instead, what follows is an exploration of consent and how difficult it can sometimes be to see the dividing line between “good” sex and “bad” - as well as how easy that can sometimes be. Clues are littered through the first couple episodes in a way that resembles the new season of Homecoming or the mechanical ingenuity of Miller’s direction on Cinemax’s Rellik. John Goodman, Michaela Coel on the "Painful" Research Process for 'Black Earth Rising'įor a while it feels like Coel and director Sam Miller - solo for the first three episodes and co-directing subsequent episodes with Coel - are approaching the series almost as a rape mystery. What did she do? Where did she go? How did she get that cut above her eye? And what’s with the mental flashes, accompanied by ear-ringing, of a strange man looming above her in a bathroom stall? The next morning, she has gaps in her memory. Arabella’s most stable friend is Simon (Ami Ameen), in a long-term relationship and working as a banker, and he seems sketchy in his own ways.ĭucking her agents’ latest plea for a draft, Arabella goes out drinking with Simon and some people she doesn’t know. Her friends Terry (Weruche Opia), an aspiring actress too nervous to go to auditions, and Kwame (Paapa Essiedu), a fitness instructor addicted to a dating app and one-night stands, are in limbos of their own. Coel plays Arabella, a writer whose first book, Chronicles of a Fed-Up Millennial, was spawned from her Twitter musings, leaving her stymied to figure out what her second book should be as deadlines approach.
The first episode sets up the series as almost a London companion piece for HBO’s terrific Insecure. But Chewing Gum is identifiable as a certain kind of comedy, while I May Destroy You is very much not a comedy, except for when it’s very funny and even those moments usually punish you for laughing. Coel’s Chewing Gum, available to stream on Netflix, surely has some similar elements and you can recognize common authorial stamps. It’s hard to be exactly prepared for what I May Destroy You is trying to do.
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