A Million Reasons for Wanting to Carry on Living

Some TV I have enjoyed in 2022.

Station 11
Station 11 is set during and twenty years after a deadly flu virus. Just what we need in these pandemic-y times, right? Strangely enough, it was. The storyline jumped around and so we saw that Kirsten, a child extra in a production of Macbeth survived into adulthood, becoming the leader of a ragtag bunch of touring Shakespearean players. It was almost a utopia, rather than a dystopia, as the gang travelled the eastern seaboard, all summer dresses and long grasses, contrasting with the almost nuclear winter that Kirsten and her involuntary guardian Jeevon survive after the autumn pandemic. Of course, there's always an antagonist and in this case it's an apocalyptic cult run by the Prophet, who turns out to have links to Kirsten. There's the notion of working through trauma via art as the Prophet plays Hamlet with his faithless mother playing Gertrude and father figure as Claudius, just as we're working through our pandemic trauma by watching this TV programme. There's also the tension between the befores and afters, the pre- and post-pandemic people with the under 24s rebelling against those who remember smartphones and ubers. This is a different twist to the generation gap. Finally, the Station 11 graphic novel has become a sacred text from the old times, used for good or evil depending on who is interpreting it.

The Woman In The House Across the Street From The Girl In The Window
Supposedly a parody of domestic noir such as The Woman In The Window, the pastiche bits weren't actually that funny. If the writers had played it straight, replaced the most obvious rip-offs with something more original, then it would have been pretty good in its own right. As it was, I enjoyed it but I am a Kristen Bell stan and only want the bet for her and her tousled bob (#hairgoals).

The Afterparty
Coming off like a millennial Breakfast Club - with murder, as takes-no-prisoners Tiffany Haddish investigates the death of a singer-slash-actor-slash influencer at an afterparty of a school reunion, featuring The Nerd, the Princess, The Jock, The Basketcase and the Criminal as well as Stath from Stath Lets Flats, Jean-Ralphio from Parks 'n' Rec, Alison Brie's husband, and Vicky the demon from The Bad Place. Each episode (chapter) is told from a different character's POV and each prefers a different genre: rom-com, action thriller, musical, psychological thriller, high school party film, anime, police procedural and Disney/Jim Henson kiddie film. It's a bit worrying that mid-noughties nostalgia is a thing now though.

Chloe
I thought this was a variation on The Talented Mr Ripley in which a lower-class person inveigles their way into the higher echelons, but it was a bit different. The titular Chloe was someone that the (anti)heroine Sasha (a.k.a Becky) stalks on Instagram and then when she commits suicide, Sasha/Becky is devastated enough to commit fraud to befriend the dead woman's friends and family and to find out what happened. There is a twist, although it's revealed slowly rather than being a shock at the end. In a story about duality - Becky pretending to be Sasha and then ending up living Chloe's life - it was interesting that two things could be true at the same time. Chloe could have mental health problems and be a victim of coercive control, Becky could be a right fuck up and be right about Chloe's hubby. There was a little dig about the power of social groups as well - how they close ranks to protect the group, abjure outsiders and excuse the bad behaviour of a group member.

Yellow Jackets
The title put me off (I thought it was about the RNLI) but it's a tale told in three timezones of a teenage girls' football team flying across the country whose plane crashes. We see them in 1996 in school, then later in the forest after the plane has crashed, and in 2021 when some of them have become 40-somethings and some....haven't. The 40 year olds are played by stars of the 90s - Juliette Lewis, Christina Ricci, Melanie Lyndskey. I liked that the writers had made it about a soccer team, rather than cheerleaders (which a lesser writer might have done) and that some of the characters were quite questionable - none of the girls is very nice, but they are all very watchable. This is the first survivalist drama I've seen which deals with periods and washing rags. It's annoying in other TV shows *cough* The Walking Dead *cough* we see raids on supermarkets to get tinned food and bottle water but never sanitary towels.

Hacks
A Joan Rivers-esque comedienne has her Vegas club Friday and Saturday night slots cancelled unless she can bring in more money. At the same time a millennial SNL-type writer has been sacked for a twitter joke. Their agent puts them together and blam! comedy gold. I liked thaty it was about two spiky, snarky women, who are nonetheless eminently likeable. There is some millennial vs boomer humour (Debra berating Ava for not working hard enough whilst at the same time spending $10K on an antique pepper pot) and a load of great lines:
"This town is full of criminals  and hookers and magicians - they don't care!
- You're forgetting about the group of people who love me: people from Florida"
"You look like Rachel Maddow's mechanic"
"This must be karmic punishment for getting fingered at my uncle's wake"
"Jokes are so male"
"Some people think it's rude to make fun of other's appearance.
- Yeah, ugly people"
"I don't like all this therapy stuff...
- It's not therapy, it's mental health TikTok"

Shining Girls
A story about a time travelling serial killer sounds schlocky as hell, but this was really good. Elizabeth Moss plays the hunted-turned hunter, tracking down Jamie Bell playing against type as a charming misogynistic murderer. It's not so much a whodunnit as a how's-he-dunnit. She is aided and abetted by a handsome Brazilian newspaperman and her sometime(s) husband Chris Chalk, another actor playing against type. It's set in the 90s, as everything must be these days in order to activate the Gen X nostalgia gland (mine was definitely stimulated when Elizabeth's riot grrrl mom complained about The Jesus Lizard) and also to make people solve things the hard way with microfiche and poring over newspapers, rather than just googling it.

Severance
As if Charlie Kauffman decided to do a remake of Terry Gilliam's Brazil.