‘Death to 2020’: Too soon?

AS anyone currently living through the second year of the pandemic knows, there is no end to 2020.

Peek beyond your curtains, shut tightly against the plague and chances are good you’ll see it’s viral business as usual.

This hasn’t stopped Netflix from engaging in some wishful thinking, and bringing us a tepid mockumentary titled ‘Death to 2020’.

Created by ‘Black Mirror’ ‘s Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, narrated by Laurence Fishburne and starring Samuel L. Jackson, Leslie Jones, Hugh Grant, Lisa Kudrow, Samson Kayo, Kumail Nanjiani, Joe Keery and Cristin Milioti, the comedy special reflects on a year many of us would rather forget.

Ironically, as the special’s deadpan parade of talking heads provides insight into the year from the angles of reporter, soccer mom, average citizen, millennial, tech billionaire, behavioural therapist and more, there is plenty that seems plucked from another decade.

The Australian wildfires, Greta Thunberg headlining Davos and that little flirtation with the Third World War when a president Trump-sanctioned US drone strike killed Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani.

Believe it or not, all that, Megxit, ‘Parasite’ winning best picture at the Oscars, and ‘Trump Impeachment: Episode 1’ all happened in 2020.

Though our collective memory seems to kick in somewhere around ‘Tiger King’, three months of 2020 were theoretically BC (Before Corona) and, after a quick recap of the before times, the mockumentary quickly dives into familiar territory.

Moving from the first reported cases of Covid-19 in Wuhan where a mysterious illness “baffles doctors before killing them” to the initial disinterest sweeping across the globe, ‘Death to 2020’ reflects on the screw-ups that defined the year, the Black Lives Matter movement, black square activism, the delusion of fake news-guzzling Karens, the bitter battle between “whiney woke lords”, and right-wing “sh*tnose extremists”, as well as the plight of millennials.

The effect is an often misfiring mockumentary that seems hastily cobbled together from tweets, TikTok and WhatsApp groups.

For all its star power and lightning-speed production, the truth is you’ve heard these jokes before and better.

Biden is old. Melania may not be that into 45.

Butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth Karens are high-key racist. Millenials work 10 jobs.

It’s good for a depressed little chuckle, but the question that will keep rolling around in your mind is: “Too soon?”

And maybe it is.

With everyone still treading water in the new nightmare, ‘Death to 2020’ feels a little rushed, a little on the nose and a little premature.

At the beginning of the special, Jackson, playing NewYorkerly News reporter Dash Bracket, hears that the mockumentary essentially recaps 2020 and asks “Why in the fuck would you want to do that?”

It’s a good question, and I suppose the answer is to take the edge off, to laugh at some of the more humorous aspects of living during this singular time, and perhaps that’s worthy if you do it well.

If it’s done with new insights, well-drawn characters, jokes we haven’t heard ad nauseam on the internet, and with some sensitivity about the fact that millions of people are sick or have died as a result of the pandemic.

With the idea that 2021 may be much like 2020 floated at the very end, we get perhaps the best bit of the whole show.

The interviewees are asked to read some anticipatory lines for the 2021 special, one of which seems to tease the premise of countless dystopian screenplays presumably written feverishly during lockdown.

“But no one could have foreseen what the vaccine would do to us, or how we’d use our new powers . . . ”

‘Death to 2020’ is now streaming on Netflix.

martha@namibian.com.na; MarthaMukaiwa on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; marthamukaiwa.com

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