Why I’m turning to dystopian TV shows during coronavirus crisis: Anthony Clavane

In order to cope with the dystopian reality of empty streets, mass self-isolations and imminent lockdowns I have turned, as is my wont, to dystopian TV shows.
Daniel Kaluuya as Bing and Jessica Brown as Abi in an episode of Black Mirror. Picture: PA Photo/Channel 4.Daniel Kaluuya as Bing and Jessica Brown as Abi in an episode of Black Mirror. Picture: PA Photo/Channel 4.
Daniel Kaluuya as Bing and Jessica Brown as Abi in an episode of Black Mirror. Picture: PA Photo/Channel 4.

As regular readers will appreciate, I am a sucker for such things. The best way of dealing with a world turned upside down, I find, is to binge-watch your favourite series about worlds turned upside down.

Not for me endless re-runs of Friends, The Office or Black Books. Nor the soothing embrace of Inspector Morse, Frost or Miss Marple. No cosying up, either, to episode after episode of Midsomer Murders.

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Instead of secret affairs, mysterious deaths in remote villages and preposterous plots, I prefer my social isolation to be accompanied by sci-fi techno-nightmares, post-apocalyptic wastelands and end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenarios.

It might seem a tad perverse when writing a column about culture in the time of corona to major on dystopian TV shows. After all, there are plenty of great, feel-good dramas to keep people entertained while self-quarantined.

But I have to come clean and confess that my way of coping with the unprecedented fallout from the current pandemic, and all its attendant anxieties, is to marathon binge-watch.

So, to those of you, like me, who are presently trapped at home with hours to fill like never before, can I recommend you check out The Handmaid’s Tale, Black Mirror, Westworld, Utopia and Humans. These are all dark, twisted and mind-bending series which, I admit, would never fit easily into the category of “comfort TV”.

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And yet I find the sheer power of their storytelling to be absolutely compelling. And, despite the often-sinister nature of the material, I always take away a sense of optimism.

Downers, you say? Not at all. They often show how the human race – whether faced by nuclear wars, environmental disasters or populist dictatorships – can show its best side and pull together to survive.

The latest dystopian series to float my boat has been the BBC’s Noughts and Crosses. It’s currently in the middle of its run – but since the whole thing dropped on iPlayer I have been unable to resist bingeing all six episodes. Based on Malorie Blackman’s bestselling 2001 novel for young adults, it exhilaratingly allows you to escape into a parallel universe, an alternative, 21st-century Britain where a black ruling class of Crosses oppresses a white underclass of Noughts.

This world turned upside down scenario is expertly used by Blackman as a device to raise awareness of racism, providing a different spin on slavery and imperial history.

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Ridiculously, it has been criticised in some quarters for being “anti-white” and accused of “race-baiting”. The Daily Mail’s Calvin Robinson moaned “it was less a TV show than a political statement…stirring up antipathy under the pretence of attacking racist attitudes”. Angry tweeters claimed it was yet another example of the BBC’s “wokeness” and its unseemly pandering to diversity. The UnHerd TV critic declared it be a “moral disaster” which insulted the “British people that voted Brexit”.

They are all, surely, missing the point. Noughts and Crosses is a meticulous study of race relations in this country. In following the Romeo and Juliet love story of star-crossed lovers – Callum and Sephy, so powerfully portrayed by newcomers Jack Rowan and Masali Baduza – it exposes Britain’s racial divisions in a fresh, original and imaginative inversion of everyday reality.

Which is exactly what should happen in any kind of challenging, thought-provoking fiction. Blackman partly wrote her iconic novel as a response to the murder, almost 27 years ago, of Stephen Lawrence, an 18-year-old black lad stabbed to death in an unprovoked attack by a gang of white youths.

“To those accusing me of being anti-white or stating I must hate white people,” she said recently, “I’m not even going to dignify your absurd nonsense with a response.”

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My response would be to argue that Noughts and Crosses shines a light not only on racism but also our modern-day culture, reflecting some deep and important truths about society. Which, after all, is the point of all great dystopian drama.

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