The new mockumentary on #Netflix caught my attention and I jumped into the first row show, popcorn and cola beside me to watch it. #Deathto2020 looked like an interesting satirical take on the year gone by. Much like the rest of the year, this turned out to be a bit of a disaster.
ASHOK’s FIVE reviews #Deathto2020 made by the #BlackMirror creators #CharlieBooker and #AnnabelJones. The intent perhaps was to take a jovial look at the lows and depression of the last nine months. Towards this, the show puts together an impressive cast of talking heads, real footage and some over-the-top interviews. And pokes a lot of fun at the various events that the year saw starting with the bushfires in Australia, the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the US, zoom overkill, Trump’s acquittal, the US elections and the drama, assasination of Iranian strongman Soleiman and the Davos summit. Along the way, the show also pokes fun at #Netflix itself starring Queen Elizabeth in the show #TheCrown. All this held together by the strong commentary of #LaurenceFishburne.
#Deathto2020 has its moments of fun. #SamuelLJackson plays Dash Bracket, a journo for the NewYorkerlyNews and kicks it off with an incredulous question actually asking why the show is being done. #KumailNanjiani plays a tech CEO Bark Multiverse and the name itself leaves you with no doubt about his pov on things. Then there is #HughGrant, playing Professor Tennyson Hoss who quotes from Game of Thrones and the Star Wars movie franchise passing it off as history. The scientist is played by #SamsonKayo and named Pyrex Flask with dialogues like “The hypothesis is that a man had intercourse with a bat and got bat juice into his peepee hole, which festered.” Some of the dialogues are funny enough. Sample this “It showed the virus could also pass from humans to icons, which raised the possibility that it might one day infect God.”
#Friends star #LisaKudrow is easily one of the best of the lot as she plays a politician brashly denying everything she has said depending on the way popular opinion is headed. “Are you saying because of the way he dressed he was asking for it?”
#JoeKeery plays the gig economy millennial who has been tracking the corona virus from the pre Wuhan days!! I think the most hilarious parts belonged to the women playing the commoners - #CristiMilioti playing the self-indignant soccer mom, keeping all her biases hidden under the omnipresent toothy grin. But the honours clearly go to #DaineMorgan who plays the ordinary British citizen who thinks that the US Elections were a reality show where you need to flip the red states to blue and vice-versa. She believes that Parasite is not even an English word and asks whether statues can breathe underwater.
The problem though with the show is that the jokes are nothing new and you can see that the writers have run out of imagination. Clearly not in the category of #BlackMirror and very soon you realize that it is going to fizzle out as a damp squib. In summary, political satire takes great wit and writing to stand out and oft-quoted jokes are simply too lame to get you there!
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