Netflix

If you haven’t heard of the Netflix docu-series Tiger King, then you probably haven’t spent much time on the internet during the national quarantine. The series centers around Joe Exotic, a now-incarcerated, gay, meth-addled, big cat breeder and former candidate for both president and governor of Oklahoma, whose bleach-blond mullet, handlebar mustache, sequined leopard-print blouses and eccentric underworld of private zoo-keeping has been the unlikely catalyst to bring a nation together that is stuck at home with severe cabin fever. Tiger King is another indication that we should prepare to say goodbye to classic documentary filmmaking and get used to the docu-series, usually timing in at about six hours long spread across several episodes.

Linda Fairstein, the former head of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Sex Crimes Unit, is suing Netflix for defamation over the streaming platform’s series When They See Us, a dramatized retelling of the ‘Central Park Five’ rape case. Fairstein’s suit alleges that the series contains numerous inaccuracies and fictionalized events that were ‘deliberately calculated to create one, clear and unmistakable villain to be targeted for hatred and vilification for what happened to The Five’. Director Ava DuVernay and co-writer Attica Locke are also named defendants in the lawsuit.

'You Can Definitely Skip Dave Chappelle's New Netflix Special,' says VICE. And if that's not recommendation enough, here's one from me: Sticks & Stones is the most, offensive, foul-mouthed, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic comedy set you're likely to see on TV this year. Chappelle, I must confess, was new to me. Yes, I know, I know, all you American readers: he's a comedy institution, ranked no. 9 in Rolling Stone's '50 Best Stand Up Comics of All Time' with numerous awards and a career going right back to his 1993 movie debut in Mel Brooks's Robin Hood: Men In Tights. But when you're English and you get to a certain age, you find yourself taking a certain perverse pride in not knowing anything whatsoever about icons who are really huge in the US.

Aziz Ansari premiered his hour-long Netflix apology special in a barely audible voice from a crouching position in the corner of a dark stage in Brooklyn. His mostly white audience was rapt and reverential through each moment of silent reflection and public embrace. For past crimes, he forgives himself, he forgives his audience for not forgiving him earlier, and he forgives all those who know not what they did — crying ‘Nazi!' in crowded theaters, promoting fake news, finding good people on both sides.We are chastened. We are redeemed. Our prodigal son has returned to us a prophet and yea, unto us his message is clear: 'Children, we are all assholes in different cultural contexts. Love each other. Now is all we have.

It was that philosopher of modern life Iggy Pop who first noticed that the screens were watching us. ‘See that cat, down on her back?’ Mr Pop reflected thoughtfully on the Stooges’ Funhouse album of 1970. ‘She got a TV Eye on me.’ These days the ‘TV Eye’ is on all of us. Black Mirror, back on Netflix for its fifth series, is what Stooges guitarist Ron Ashton would have recognized as an extended riff on the same theme. Except that while Mr Pop found the experience quite pleasant— ‘Yeah I love her so’ — it’s hard to enjoy Black Mirror. To be fair, that might not be the point of it. We aren’t here to enjoy ourselves. Iggy Pop’s signature move is to drop his pants at the end of the show.

Reincarnation is like a drug. Everyone’s dying to try it. About a quarter of American adults believe in it. The ranks of the born again and again include a similar proportion of American Christians. If de Tocqueville were to be reincarnated among us, he would say, ‘I told you so’, take a long draw on his Juul, then make some droll observation about religion in a market economy, and the importance of giving the customers what they want, in this life and the previous. Never mind hell and heresy, the land of the second chance is the land of the third and fourth chance. Russian Doll is an ironic comedy about reincarnation set in lower Manhattan. Aging cynics will recognize it as the metempsychotic rebirth of Groundhog Day (1993) and After Hours (1985).

I became aware of a bizarre fixation when the Netflix series Dark Tourist visited Milwaukee, former stalking ground of Jeffrey Dahmer who tortured, murdered, dismembered and even ate at least 17 men and boys. By far the majority of those who pay to join the ghoulish city tours commemorating his life and work were attractive, single women of marriageable age, who seemed somehow to consider him the ultimate dreamy life partner they would just love to have reformed – if only he hadn’t been bludgeoned to death in prison while serving 16 consecutive life terms. Now Netflix has turned its attention to another serial-killing supervillain Ted Bundy.

Any attempt to satirize millennial culture is doomed to fail. It’s already too absurd and too self-aware. A caricature would verge on the surreal. The best (perhaps only) way to squeeze some fun out of it is through deadpan objectivity, which is the secret to the success of FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened. The sad and hilarious new Netflix documentary tells the story of an ill-fated music festival that was supposed to take place in the Bahamas. Its organizer, Billy McFarland – imagine Walter Mitty meets Bernie Madoff – used the influencer economy to bootstrap into existence the kind of party billionaire rappers fantasize about, with supermodels in barely there bikinis lounging on yachts levitating over a crystalline sea.

What I watched: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch What I turned off: re-runs of Arrested Development (it’s great but my son has been making me binge watch with him and you can have too much of a good thing) What I’m going to be tuning into: Trigger Warning with Killer Mike. He’s a rapper and activist but I get the impression that politically he’s like the anti-Kanye-West.

‘The rule in our household is: if a TV series hasn’t got subtitles, it’s not worth watching,’ a friend told me the other day. Once this approach would have been both extremely limiting and insufferably pompous. In the era of Netflix and Amazon Prime, though, it makes a lot of sense. There’s something about English-speaking TV — especially if it’s made in the US — that tends towards disappointment. Obviously there have been exceptions: The Sopranos; Band of Brothers; Breaking Bad; Game of Thrones. But too often, what’s missing is that shard of ice in the creative heart that drama needs if it’s to be truly exceptional. American drama is a slobbering puppy dog.