While the large number of new broadcast drama series noted in my last blog have continued to occupy my evenings, my daytime viewing of late (on my iMac, in my attic/office) has been enlivened by some of the latest offerings from Netflix, including some productions of true excellence. And, while I continue to watch the things on traditional TV on a weekly basis (out of habit rather than opportunity), I prefer to consume Netflix productions on an episode-per-day basis, usually accompanied by morning coffee or afternoon tea.

 

I greatly enjoyed last year’s American Vandal, which won a Peabody Award and which I blogged about when I discovered it that way earlier this year, but I was uncertain whether a second season would work – after all, it was the perfect parody, but that is not something that can be easily repeated. However, two things make American Vandal 2 as good, if not even better than season one (though you can never replicate that first feeing of excitement about something truly original). Firstly, it is, as before, very much more than just a parody – once again you get involved with the characters as if it was a straight drama, and this time round there are many more of them, all brilliantly written and portrayed. Secondly, there are more issues being explored, particularly around class and race, and more documentary styles being invoked than just the crime investigation genre, which remains the basis – I could find echoes of such pieces as Mea Maxima Culpa, O.J.: Made in America and Catfish, as well as numerous pieces investigating the background to school shootings. The series even reaches a somewhat sobering and entirely serious conclusion about the lives of adolescents in the era of social media.

Above all, though, it made me laugh out loud even more than season one and effortlessly maintained the joke over 8 episodes – I do enjoy scatological humour and it doesn’t come purer than this. Indeed, the grossness of much of the humour provides the perfect counterpoint to the growing seriousness of the issues being confronted. Whether the trick can be repeated again is a moot point, but something tells me it is going to be fun finding out. In the meantime, American Vandal 2 is a very strong addition to my running shortlist for the best of 2018.

 

If American Vandal packs itself full of references to prominent documentaries, then Cary Joji Fukunaga’s Maniac does much the same for dramas – unfortunately, though, it is not a parody (as such) and to be constantly thinking about references and influences means this viewer was not really fully engaged by the drama being presented. OK, the bulk of the piece was exploring the psychological state of the characters undergoing experiments with drugs designed to reveal and counteract their deepest problems, and this was conveyed in dream sequences featuring other characters from their lives (shades of The Singing Detective there) but Fukunaga was clearly having too much self-indulgent fun with this. And, while the genres used – gangsters, sci-fi, medieval fantasy and so on – were clearly signposted, I was also aware of too many other styles and tropes employed in recent series: a bit of Mr Robot here, a bit of Fargo there and a bit of The Leftovers everywhere (the series was created by Leftovers writer Patrick Somerville, which was one of the main things that drew me to it in the first place). The main problem was one of balance: while episode one provided an intriguing and involving opening and episode 10 gave us a moving and satisfying conclusion, everything in between was devoted to the drugs trials and fantasy sequences. It was entertaining enough to keep me watching to the end, but I finished up wondering why.

 

No such problem with 22 July (released on Netflix a few days ago): a single drama of just under two and a half hours duration, which gripped from beginning to end – one of those things that is so good, despite its grim subject matter, that you simply give yourself over to it for however long it takes. The subject is the terrorist massacres in Norway committed in 2011 by the right-wing fanatic Anders Behring Breivik, in which he used a bomb and guns to kill 77 people, most of them youngsters at a Labour Party summer camp. It is written and directed by Paul Greengrass, who, despite not being Norwegian, was possibly the only person who could do justice to the subject. Following Bloody Sunday (2002) and United 93 (2006), he has now completed a trilogy of drama-documentaries about horrific events of such magnitude that they are known by the day or date on which they occurred. His cast of Norwegian actors, all speaking English, is quite remarkable – I don’t know how it has gone down in Norway, but it is testament to the power of the direction that this anomaly simply does not register.

 

Greengrass documents the dreadful events of the day in the first half hour of the film. After that, his twin focus is Breivik himself and Viljar Hanssen, a survivor of the attack whose painful rehabilitation after being shot five times and testimony at Breivik’s trial represents the story of all the victims and stands as a metaphor for Norway’s own recovery and defence of its standards and democracy, as do the portrayals of Breivik’s defence lawyer and Viljar’s mother, who is elected mayor of their small town. And, of course, at a time of growing nationalist populism in Europe and beyond, it is very much a tale for our times. Breivik may be behind a locked door, while Viljar stands in a snowy fjord in the final two shots of the film, but the former has a chilling certainty about the cause for which he committed mass murder, while the latter looks troubled and uncertain.

Once again Greengrass has brought the sensibility he learned in his days of making current affairs television (for Granada’s World in Action), including his trademark use of hand-held cameras, to a drama documentary which convinces as though it were a piece of reportage. Another one for the 2018 shortlist!

 

And, while still on Netflix, next week sees the release of the long-awaited follow up to Making a Murderer. I am looking forward to re-engaging with how the story of Steven Avery has developed in the years since the original series came out, but I do worry that it may prove difficult to take it as seriously as it deserves, so soon after seeing American Vandal 2.