A stretch too far? Discussing climate change alongside The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu 2017-) is unorthodox but offers an alternative and marginalised perspective. Typically, when thinking of climate change, David Attenborough, Britain’s national treasure, comes to mind.
As a currently-peripatetic academic, I often live and travel in areas that are meteorologically interesting. Between growing up somewhere that can give residents all four seasons in a single day (not to mention metres of snow at a time)[1] and then living in a series of deserts, tropical savannahs, highlands and seasides, listening to or watching local weather forecasts has long been an integral part of my daily life.
Comedy-drama The Good Place (NBC, 2016-2020) features a variety of existential and philosophical debates as part of its premise.
Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak): ‘ It might have been a he. They [his wives] weren’t all women .’ Guillermo de la Cruz (Harvey Guillén): ‘ You could do that back then? ’ Nandor the Relentless: ‘ Of course. Some of my wives were girl wives, some of them were guy wives.
‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’ (Austen, 1813: 1). As has no doubt become clear across this series of blogs, Succession has a lot of things happening simultaneously.
In the previous blog in this series, I discussed how Succession utilises analogies to Christianity to reinforce and subvert discourses surrounding masculinities and martyrdom; that blog includes a precis of the series.
In my first ever blog for ECREA/CST, I talked about how Succession (HBO/Sky, 2017-2023), then having aired three series, engaged with Classical history and myth/legends.
There are, I believe, in all countries myths that emphasise some places as outliers, as different from the norm. In France, this myth was humorously captured in the film Welcome to the Sticks (Dany Boon, 2008) . In Germany, it is noticeable in how people from the rest of the country talk about Bavaria or indeed people from Bavaria talk about the rest of the country.
‘Mother, Mother Ocean/After all the years I’ve found My occupational hazard/Being my occupation’s just not around’ ‘A Pirate Looks at 40,’ Jimmy Buffet
While improvised or unscripted television has been a feature of media industries for decades, most such series are either comedy or reality television. Suspects (Channel 5, 2014-2016), on the other hand, was an unscripted crime drama featuring improvised dialogue. For those unfamiliar with the series, Suspects follows a group of officers from an unspecified London CID.
