JULY 13 — Before the arrival of streaming, I had never been much of a fan of TV series. Not because they’re not good, mind you, but mainly because I mostly couldn’t muster the will (or patience) to wait for a new episode every week just to continue following the story of a particular TV series.
If my memory serves me correctly, only the Buffy The Vampire Slayer series had me glued to the TV screen with every new episode way back then.
On the few rare occasions that I do get invested in multi-season series like Game of Thrones, Battlestar Galactica and True Blood (yes, I kind of like vampires), I tend to wait until the whole season has finished so I can binge on the whole thing on home video.
Streaming has changed the game somewhat by mostly dropping an entire season for people to binge watch on their favourite platforms, which probably explains why I’ve been watching more and more series nowadays since this has become the normal practice.
Unlike my preferences when watching films, which includes a lot more cerebral and artistically challenging fare, when it comes to watching TV series, I tend to pick those that I think will entertain me rather than ones that will satisfy my artistic palate, hence the guilty pleasure that is True Blood being one of my favourites.
Even the stranger ones I love, like Doom Patrol, are very entertaining because of the zany detours that they tend to take.
In short, when it comes to TV series, I prefer those of the “turn your brain off and get addicted” variety, and here are a couple of them that I managed to catch in the last few weeks.
“Supacell”
Another series about ordinary people with superpowers is not exactly what the world needs more of right now, but the fact that this one was created by Rapman, a British rapper who stormed the film world with his debut feature film Blue Story back in 2019, was more than enough to pique my curiosity.
With only six episodes for its first season, all of them dropping at the same time about two weeks ago, it’s really very easy to binge this one in just one or two days.
It's your typical superhero origin story, but creator and showrunner Rapman (who also directed three episodes) manages to find a fresh angle to approach things by setting this one in South London and focusing solely on black main characters, therefore giving the series plenty of room to slip in some social commentary on the state of black lives in the UK.
The superpowers that these characters have may be big, ranging from teleportation, telekinesis, super speed, invisibility to super strength, but Rapman keeps the story surrounding them small and intimate, concentrating on the minute details of each characters’ lives, giving the audience plenty of room to empathise with each character’s plight.
The low budget can sometimes painfully show in the sometimes pretty dodgy CGI, but the story’s big heart, and commitment to exploring and showing the lives of black people in the UK right now, makes this one of the best series of the year so far, and one you should be bingeing straight away, right now!
Joko Anwar’s ‘Nightmares and Daydreams’
From the council estates of South London, we go straight to Indonesia for another Netflix exclusive, which dropped the entirety of its 7 episodes about a month ago.
Created by highly respected Indonesian horror auteur Joko Anwar, this one’s set across many decades, but not arranged in chronological order, and this supernatural sci-fi series will remind people of shows like The Twilight Zone and Black Mirror, which probably explains its status as a bona fide global and not just regional hit, which is not something you could say about most Netflix exclusives coming out of our region.
The episodes are distinct enough from each other, even if they will ultimately be revealed as interconnected, that you can even choose to watch an episode or two without even following the order in which they’re being presented.
As standalone episodes, there are plenty here that will stick in your mind, with my favourites being Episode 4 (about a fisherman who ends up having photographic evidence of his encounter with an angel), Episode 2 (about an orphan who brings wealth to anyone who adopts him, but with the caveat that those who did will eventually end up dead) and Episode 3 (about a writer who finds herself physically experiencing what the character she’s writing about is experiencing in the novel she’s writing).
And the way Episode 7 ties everything together will probably either make you squeal with delight, or cringe with embarrassment, with absolutely no middle ground here.
Whatever you do though, just sit through the slightly underwhelming first episode (mainly because of how painfully dodgy the CGI is in this one) and watch as the series improves with every episode, with Episode 4 probably its undoubted peak, one of the best single episodes of any series you’ll watch this year.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
