The Best Show on TV
So by now even those of you who hadn’t heard of Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino before , probably would’ve taken notice of him this year. His music video ‘This is America’ was quite the storm this summer but his other big project hasn’t quite got the same attention. Well, for my money this is the best show that I’ve watched all year.
So Atlanta does something very special. If The Wire is the standard for Realism and Twin Peaks the same for Surrealism, Atlanta you could say is the first show that I’ve watched that combines the two perfectly. And that is quite an extraordinary thing to do ( polar opposites ) and I’ll make an effort here to explain how this is achieved with the example of an episode. No big spoilers.
So Season 1 has this episode where we meet Black Justin Bieber. Now without going into any more details on the plot. Just think about that for a minute. Black Justin Bieber ? What ? No really, he’s the Justin Bieber we all know but he’s black that’s all. Well, so you now have Justin Bieber who is a larger than life figure today but a very ‘real’ person right ? He’s now black and that is quite a surreal thing. As the episode unfolds, you can imagine this to be quite funny. Your surprise and your amusement to this fact tells you a lot about how people see race. You’ve now achieved racial social commentary simultaneously just cause of this one character. This is what Glover and his frequent collaborator Hiro Murai are trying to achieve. It’s so beautifully layered not some preachy sermon (looking at you J Cole).
You ever had this moment where you’re narrating a story to your friend about what happened earlier in the day which was quite surreal to you but to the one you’re conversing with it was just a very normal incident. Well, Atlanta is a bit like that. Season 2 quite incredibly was an improvement on Season 1 and boy was it haunting (very much in the same vein as 2017’s ‘Get Out’). The team behind Atlanta was at the peak of its powers. It’s probably the most important show post Obama.
So by now even those of you who hadn’t heard of Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino before , probably would’ve taken notice of him this year. His music video ‘This is America’ was quite the storm this summer but his other big project hasn’t quite got the same attention. Well, for my money this is the best show that I’ve watched all year. So Atlanta does something very special. If The Wire is the standard for Realism and Twin Peaks the same for Surrealism, Atlanta you could say is the first show that I’ve watched that combines the two perfectly. And that is quite an extraordinary thing to do ( polar opposites ) and I’ll make an effort here to explain how this is achieved with the example of an episode. No big spoilers.
So Season 1 has this episode where we meet Black Justin Bieber. Now without going into any more details on the plot. Just think about that for a minute. Black Justin Bieber ? What ? No really, he’s the Justin Bieber we all know but he’s black that’s all. Well, so you now have Justin Bieber who is a larger than life figure today but a very ‘real’ person right ? He’s now black and that is quite a surreal thing. As the episode unfolds, you can imagine this to be quite funny. Your surprise and your amusement to this fact tells you a lot about how people see race. You’ve now achieved racial social commentary simultaneously just cause of this one character. This is what Glover and his frequent collaborator Hiro Murai are trying to achieve. It’s so beautifully layered not some preachy sermon (looking at you J Cole).
You ever had this moment where you’re narrating a story to your friend about what happened earlier in the day which was quite surreal to you but to the one you’re conversing with it was just a very normal incident. Well, Atlanta is a bit like that. Season 2 quite incredibly was an improvement on Season 1 and boy was it haunting (very much in the same vein as 2017’s ‘Get Out’). The team behind Atlanta was at the peak of its powers. It’s probably the most important show post Obama.
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