You're my angel - you know that right?

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV of 2023

#7 :  The Curse

When John Logie Baird invented television in 1923, it’s safe to say, for oh so many reasons, that he couldn’t have anticipated The Curse. If he had, he may well have decided against unleashing such technology altogether. Because here we are, 100 years on, with former reality TV trickster Nathan Fielder and cinematic maverick Benny Safdie forming an unholy alliance to make the most wonderfully horrible black comedy series the medium has ever known. Following a married couple (Fielder and Emma Stone) who position themselves as anti-gentrification philanthropists, seemingly unaware of their own prejudices, narcissism and hypocrisy, it’ll have you cringing until your face hurts, and quite possibly squirming yourself to death. Here, Stone increases her appetite for troubling, surrealist work with a brilliantly painful performance, while Fielder, displaying unprecedented levels of awkwardness, provides a masterclass in upsetting physical nuance. The whole thing is gloriously icky.

I've read quite a few reviews that say this is the cringiest thing they've ever seen - and if there's one thing I don't do well, it's cringe. So I'm not expecting to last long with this, but let's see.

Hmmm - well, I didn't last long and cringe is involved, but it wasn't the whole reason. I'm not entirely sure I can explain the whole reason, but I'm happy to give it a go. The series follows Whitney (Emma Stone) and Asher (Nathan Fielder) as they try to do something to do with building a passive house estate, whilst being filmed by Dougie (Benny Safdie). And there's some other stuff about other stuff as well, but it all seems awfully complicated.

Whatever's going on, everyone is very committed to it though - Emma and Nathan are fully invested in the roles. To the point that you kinda wish they weren't - the scene where they "have sex" is something I'm still trying to forget. And it certainly is cringey, but I found I could watch it without having to turn it off which means it beats season 2 of the UK version of The Office which is, for me, the high-water mark of cringe.

My main problem with this is that it's very, very deadpan - soooooooo dry. You really have to concentrate to see the comedy - some of which (but not much) is proper laughs, but much more of it is "situational", which does not, to no-one's surprise, feature actual laughs. And a lot of it isn't comedy at all, but it takes you some time to decide that the case - it's just really hard work to watch with minimal reward and what says "fun" more than that? 

So I'm afraid I gave it a couple of episodes and just gave up on it - unlike some things where I can see the appeal but it's not for me, in this case I just don't understand why anyone would want to watch this or why the critics loved it so much. The good news for everyone is that it's streaming on Paramount+, so you're not going to stumble across it and decide "let's give this a go - what's the worst that can happen?"

And with that, we've completed as much as we're going to of Empire's list - for completeness, the remaining entries are Poker Face, Barry, Happy Valley, The Last Of Us, Succession and The Bear but obviously I'll do a pointless write-up sometime soon...

#8 - Great telly
2023 - Year over!