These days you can't talk about television without mentioning My Stuffed Reindeer. It is a work as sick as it is sophisticated. Comedian Richard Gadd takes two traumatic experiences as a source of inspiration: the harassment he experienced at the hands of a woman and the sexual assault he suffered at the hands of a colleague. It is an extreme drama, a psychological thriller and even a black comedy at the same time.
And, while it has the capacity to surprise, it cannot be said that it is a rarity: there are a few series that, from trauma to trauma, have taken us this far.
Let's start, for example, with the Australian Please like me (2013-2016) by Josh Thomas, which is on Netflix. There is no doubt that this is a comedy about a homosexual boy who, after coming out to his friends, tries to succeed in a superficial sexual and romantic market where he does not meet the physical requirements. But this is only one of the two main plots.
In parallel, first from the protagonist's mother and then from secondary characters, an x-ray of depression, suicide and self-harm is made, with scenes, plots and twists that often plunge the viewer into a state of stupefaction. . It is the tenderness of friendship before thirty, an infallible sense of jokes and messing with oneself on Thomas's part, but also an x-ray of mental health.
Then we have, of course, Fleabag (2016-2019), on Prime Video. If it weren't one of the most awarded and recommended series of all time, I would be more careful with spoilers, at least for the first season. Phoebe Waller-Bridge adapted a monologue with which she triumphed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and, based on the character of Fleabag, she explored a woman lost in life.
The viewer, halfway through the story, discovered that he was living a kind of lie: he felt responsible for the death of his partner and best friend, whom he had betrayed before she took her own life. The sense of humor, the explosions of drama and its way of breaking the fourth wall became, from one day to the next, a milestone in television, as demonstrated by the fact that it won the Emmy for best comedy, direction, script and protagonist. for the second season.
Also on Prime Video, One Mississippi (2015-2017), a series notable for its idea of hybrid comedy and experiences that, like Gadd in My Stuffed Reindeer, were inspired by real events. Tig Notaro, a well-known comedian from the US, had the worst year of her life: her mother died, she was diagnosed with cancer for which she had to undergo a double mastectomy, and she was diagnosed with a digestive disease that left her left in the bones.
Notaro, in fact, became history on the comedy stages of the United States when, four days after receiving the news that he had cancer, he stood before the audience and said “hello, good evening, I have cancer,” to which No one knew whether to laugh, cry or what, while he discussed the situation with them with jokes. In this sense, One Mississippi is a calmer reading of the situation.
More nuclear was I Could Destroy You (2019), on HBO Max, which won the award for best script for Michaela Coel, also creator and protagonist. The first scenes suggest that this is the umpteenth millennial authorial comedy: Arabella, inspired by Michaela herself, is a writer with problems focusing on work and who decides to go out partying with her usual friends, cocaine, joints and the alcohol.
The next day he is in shock. Her experiences from the previous day attack her like lightning: she was raped in the bathroom of the bar where she was having a drink and, in the midst of post-traumatic stress, she tries to reconstruct that fateful night. A biographical series designed to stir consciences and, through fiction, address the conflicts, experiences and emotions latent in the artist.
I Could Destroy You could even be read as the clearest precedent for My Stuffed Reindeer, which like Fleabag also reuses material from the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, where Gadd had reflected on the grooming and sexual assaults he had suffered at the hands of a man whose identity he does not want to reveal (and that is causing havoc to those who have worked with him on occasion).
Trauma as a trigger, as a source of inspiration or as a tool to put the viewer on the edge while comedy is flirted with (or clearly expressed) or at least, as happens in My Stuffed Reindeer, it is x-rayed from the outside.
