Death To 2020, a new Netflix comedy special from Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, gets its best joke in early. Dash Bracket (Samuel L. Jackson), a reporter for the “New Yorkerly News,” asks what he’s being interviewed about; the off-screen director explains, “We’re reliving the events of 2020.” Bracket responds, “Why the fuck would you want to do that?” It’s a good question, and one which Death never satisfactorily answers. A lot has happened in the last twelve months, much of it not great, and it’s likely that the sheer volume of news has pushed a few minor catastrophes out of the popular consciousness. But even taking that into account, it’s hard to grasp the point of revisiting any of it now, especially not in the guise of a talking heads documentary where various familiar faces tell obvious jokes over familiar footage of this last particular year in hell.
It goes down easily enough, at least, and there’s arguably some value in just putting everything out there in one clear package. Plus, it’s likely that coronavirus complications prevented Brooker and Jones from getting much more ambitious than what we see here. As productions go, it’s simple enough: A series of guest stars playing various modern archetypes (Hugh Grant as a stuffy British historian; Kumail Nanjiani as a sociopathic tech guy billionaire; Cristin Milioti as an Internet radicalized soccer mom right-winger; Tracy Ullman as the Queen; several others) offer commentary as Laurence Fishburne narrates a broad overview of the events of 2020, starting with the Australian wildfire in January and ending with the development of the coronavirus vaccine. Along the way, the special provides quick summaries of several major events, including Trump’s impeachment trial, Boris Johnson’s inept messaging in regards to the covid pandemic, and the Black Lives Matter protest movement.
None of these summaries are particularly insightful, but they’re not really meant to be—the point is less to offer a new spin or take on the issues, and more to serve as a sort of cathartic “what in the fuck?” rush. And hey, you may not have realized it, but a lot did happen this year, and it’s kind of shocking to be reminded of it all at once. I’d somehow completely forgotten that Tom Hanks getting the coronavirus was a major step in terms of news coverage and the American public taking the pandemic seriously, and odds are, at least something in the special’s hour and 10 minutes will serve as a reminder of some weird or unexpected twist in the constantly churning cycle of news.
Some of the character bits work better than others. Having Jackson serve as a reliable voice of sanity is a smart touch, and Fishburne’s narration delivers straight reporting and one-liners in the same confident, straight-forward tone, making some jokes land better than they might have otherwise. Ullman’s Queen feels like the sort of thing she could do in her sleep, but then, that’s true of just about everyone, and there’s something comforting in knowing where almost all of this is going before it happens. And there are moments here or there that lean into an idea enough to push it into the necessary levels of absurdity. Milioti’s intensely cheerful hatefulness builds to a nice fever pitch, and there’s a cute bit of surrealism when Samson Kayo’s scientist starts complaining about how the documentary keeps cutting to vaguely related stock footage whenever he talks about the more complicated aspects of generating a covid vaccine.
Not every subject gets the satiric treatment. The murder of George Floyd and subsequent protests is treated with relative seriousness, the humor coming from underlining the stupidity of the racist response; there’s an odd bit about Boris Johnson getting his soul put into the body of Black man by Nanjiani’s tech company that’s maybe the closest the special comes to an actual comedy sketch, but it’s brief and not all that insightful. There are a few lame stabs at “both-sides-ing” the polarization of American politics (Leslie Jones as a behavioral therapist sick of the fascists on the right, and the “fucking whiny woke lords” on the left), but in general, the special is content to take swings at the most obvious, if still deserving, targets. Lisa Kudrow, as a chipper political operative with a complete indifference to the dictates of reality, is a decent, if not exactly necessary, reminder of just how bald faced the lies have gotten in the past year.
Really, though, it’s hard to get past the word “necessary” for nearly all of this. Does anyone need more gags about Biden being old? Trump being a piece of shit? The world being a never-ending nightmare, from which the only escape is death? Maybe the only real reason this exists is to try and re-package the events of 12 frightening, chaotic months into something like a familiar narrative arc. Reality still feels like it’s coming dangerously close to spinning out of control every other day, and seeing stories that once paraded across our Internet feeds like living nightmares repurposed into fodder for sarcasm and mild mockery at least suggests that there’s some kind of normalcy left, however illusory that might be. After all, it can’t be that bad if we’re still snickering, right? Please?
Stray observations
- “I mean really, why?”
- “Fire, a radicalized angry form of air”
- “Don’t people call you selfish?” “I don’t know, it’s soundproof.”
- The old man Biden jokes weren’t amazing, but “as familiar as an old chair and nearly as sharp-witted” was pretty good.
- Diane Morgan is great as “one of top five most average people in the world;” her travails in trying to have a social life during a pandemic came dangerously close to high concept.
73 Comments
I’m with SLJ on this one. I lived through it. I’m still living through it. I have no need to be reminded of any of it since it is both literally and figuratively still happening.
I have no problem with the concept itself, the problem is it just wasn’t funny or interesting in any way whatsoever. I get the feeling Brooker’s wittiest days are behind him.
His Antiviral wipe a few months ago was pretty hysterical though.
How can they do this? 2020 isn’t even over yet. In the next few days, there are so many other terrible things that could happen!
Someone might release an unnecessary Netflix satire about an ongoing global pandemic.
Yeah, we’re really tempting fate here. If Boko Haram kidnaps Dolly Parton or a sinkhole opens under Betty White’s house we’ll know who to blame.
Please don’t even jokingly say that. Can’t risk it.
Seriously, I mean there was a truck bomb in downtown Nashville just 2 days ago! In any other year that would be massive news!
It’s kind of weird it isn’t more massive news – over here, it didn’t even seem to make the BBC website until it was declared a suicide bombing.But seriously, a massive and peculiar suicide truck bomb in Nashville on Christmas Day, with no news about the suspect(s) for several days – how is that not dominating the news? Twitter is filled with people claiming it’s a conspiracy, that ‘They’ are keeping the media from reporting on it – and while that’s obviously total nonsense, I can for once kind of see why the idea makes sense to a lot of people!
I think that it would be getting more coverage if anyone but the perpetrator had died. Thankfully that wasn’t the case, but it’s not like a small pipe bomb or something, it was a huge truck bomb. If the bomber hadn’t purposely warned people away or if he’d chosen a busier time, it would have been a LOT worse.
Indeed; and we shouldn’t let the “warning” gloss over the fact that anyone who detonates a bomb that large in a public place, with little warning, is essentially accepting the risk of being a mass murderer, however much they try to spin it. Even with the warning and at that time of day, it’s still extremely fortunate that nobody else died.But coming from a UK perspective: we had numerous IRA bombs that didn’t actually kill anybody, but that seemed to loom larger in the public consciousness. Partly that’s because the IRA had even bigger bombs, and they targeted higher-profile buildings, particularly in financially-important areas, so that the economic damage was disproportionate (the 2nd, 3rd and 4th most expensive terrorist incidents were all IRA bombings). But even so: many people could potentially have been killed; there’s massive damage to one of America’s most iconic cities; internet and phone service was cut off to a large area and airports grounded flights; it was on Christmas Day!; and while the (presumed) perpetrator is now known, the motive is still unclear. There must also be serious questions about national security: while this particular massive truck bomb didn’t kill anybody, the next one might. There should be a lot of discussion about whether the perpetrator should have raised any red flags.
If they were brown-skinned and/or Muslim, it would have been.
So it’s Brooker’s Yearly Wipe he used to do with the BBC but with a lot of pointless celebs involved and the pointedness having been blunted to reach a wider audience?Yep, Black Mirror all over again.
But he already made a Wipe earlier this year…
After years toiling in cult obscurity, Brooker is now ‘making it’ in the US. It’s no surprise he’s become keen on translating his comedy for an American audience (dumbing it down, removing the sharp edges, and adding lots of celebrities). It may not be as artistically valuable, but the value to his bank account is exponentially greater!
I watched a little and it’s nicely done I guess. Satirizing a thing that is still occurring doesn’t quite work. Yup everything is fucked and lots of stupid terrible people continue to be stupid terrible people. I’m still here in reality I know. The amount of wealthy creators that are going to want to recap everything that just occurred is so unnecessary. We fucking know, we don’t need your creative interpretations of it.
I have to give props to The Onion because they’ve been one of the few sources of “2020 sucks” humor that was actually funny. Mostly because they weren’t afraid of bad taste gallows humor. This is just going to be watered down playing-it-safe bullshit.
“We’re reliving the events of 2020.” Bracket responds, “Why the fuck would you want to do that?” It’s a good question, I think your co-workers missed the memo and went ahead with full Year in Review mode.
They do this every year for these categories as do all pop culture sites. Only one of those has a pandemic/terrible year spin on it. The horror podcast I like did a year end wrap up of their ten best.
Yes, they stick to recapping this terrible year in every single news piece, instead.
Year end round ups are normal. They normally cover movies, tv, music, games, random internet stuff etc and they do a year end round up of everything that occurred. Just like Vulture or Rolling Stone or Bloody Disgusting or Pitchfork or comedy sites or Entertainment Weekly or whatever site/publication.
Sure, but it’s not like any of those outlets are required by law to recap each year. It’s just a (traffic-generating) tradition. Why do they get a pass for recapping a shitty year, but Brooker doesn’t?
They’re recapping art and content that was put out into the world related to things they cover all year. These things actually exist. Not fictionally satirizing 2020 events with many characters that don’t even exist. You haven’t watched the Brooker thing have you?
No, but I watched the trailer and read this review, and it sounds like it’s a semi-satirical recap, in that it actually does recap the real events of the year, but does it by using fake characters played by actors as talking heads. But I’m still not sure why that makes a difference; the article’s implication is that Brooker shouldn’t have made a thing that recaps this shitty year, because who wants to relive this shitty year? But the same logic applies to regular recaps.
A satirical news recap is different than here’s a bunch of art and content from the year that we’ve covered on this site. Creative fictionalized interpretations of news that is still happening and affecting the entire world. Watch the damn thing and get back to me.
Dude, calm down. Nobody needs to get angry over this. We’re just shooting the shit.
I’m not even defending AV Club just like these are very different things and the comparison isn’t relevant. It should be obvious to yourself. But you haven’t seen it either so great.
I think we’re just talking past each other at this point. To me it’s pretty obvious that “no one wants to relive 2020″ isn’t a valid reason to say this shouldn’t have been made, in light of the fact that there are countless recaps of 2020 out there. If Death to 2020 is badly made, then that’d be a valid reason, but that’s not what the review was saying.So, whatever, I think we’re done here.
“calm down”
You actual garbage.
Nobody was talking to you.
I think you missed my point. Yes, year-end round-ups are normal for pop culture sites and these are no different. But if you want to find the AV Club needlessly and endlessly recapping what a shit year it’s been, just read basically any news wire article; they do it constantly. They can barely seem to write about any current events without reference to the overall awfulness of 2020.
And further: that this review is so in agreement with the joke that 2020 is too horrible to bother recapping but this site is happy to roll in that mud.
Year end round ups are normal and acceptable in written form but we need to dump on a film that attempts to do it.
Re: “Was that Martin Freeman as the voice of the unseen director? It sounded like him, but I couldn’t be sure.” – No, it was Brooker himself.
I thought this awful, sadly, I used to love Brooker’s annual wipes, and this year’s Antiviral Wipe back in May was great, but here the satire was muted and mild and almost pointless, which is pretty depressing when it comes to Johnson and Trump and the fact that their actions have caused so many to die.
Oh man, Penny Arcade is still going, huh? Krahulik’s art looks like one of those slider bars where you turn the saturation of an image all the way up to see what it looks like with crazy colors, but it just keeps going off the side of the screen into oblivion.
But his style’s chronological evolution also makes a fascinating slider bar to drag back and forth.
It’s physically painful to look at these days. It’s like grotesque parody of how it began. Simpsons in reverse.
This retrospective managed to annoy me twice during the first damn minute. That line was immediately followed by a voice-over: “A year whose story couldn’t be told until now, because it was still happening.” The story of which, Charlie. The story of which.
too soon.
Charlie Brooker is the voice heard off camera.
ah damn was hoping there would be some twist here.
Maybe a funnier approach would have had totally insane characters genuinely celebrating the year, VH1’s “I Love the…” style.
We might as well do a “Roast of 2020” with the usual gang of idiots (not to be confused with the Usual Gang Of Idiots).
“It was like a rap battle in a seniors home , only worse”
Thank you SO MUCH for pointing out the grating ‘bothsidesism’ of the film. False equivalence is so dangerous. Saying neo-Nazis are the same as ‘cancelling’ people or things that are ignorant of or hurtful to the marginalised is so frustrating. I wish they had been braver and talked about the real dangers in the world rather than lazily sitting on the fence and saying both sides are equally bad.
It really, REALLY, didn’t say both sides were equally bad. Not recognising some of the negative traits of the people you support is a really dangerous step. I get the idea that because the other side do it (and they are SO bad/downright evil) then you may want to try to counter-balance it with your own one-eyed views, but it’s not a long-term solution to getting out of the current shit-show.
Personally, I liked it. It’s not perfect; the characters are hit and miss, and stick to the tropes. But I genuinely laughed at the deadpan narration, and there’s something cathartic about laughing through everything that’s happened this year. I wrote my own review on my Medium: https://damonferrara.medium.com/death-to-2020-review-a-cathartic-and-hilarious-eulogy-118601d3d47e
Well, this almost had me at Tracey Ullman as the Queen, though I’d watch it in a heartbeat if it was Miranda Richardson as the Queen.
What makes it worth it, as with anything he does, is Charlie Brooker’s incredible knack for a turn of phrase.Also, the swipe at Adam Curtis came way out of left field and was excellent.
Yeah, the answer to the repeated “why does this exist?” questions in the article boil down to Charlie Brooker is very funny and his (and his writers) word choices are often fucking perfect.
Well…It wasn’t anything compared to those wonderful wipe videos Brooker makes. But…Hugh Grant was fun and I can never be harsh on anything that let’s Hugh Grant be fun. It’s a shame the rest of it couldn’t really do much.
“Was that Martin Freeman as the voice of the unseen director?”Nope, that was Brooker himself.
So just stick to The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year then?
“Does anyone need more gags about […] Trump being a piece of shit?”I mean, it’s never stopped this site.
I caught about 15 minutes of this and it was so full of itself I couldn’t stand it. It came off as a two-hour comedic equivalent of the ‘celebrities sing “Imagine” video.
Wow. What exactly do you find to be funny, if you say you couldn’t stand this? I’d say I was asking for a friend but I don’t have any.
It’s actually 1 hour long
You seem to have enjoyed it more than Vox did. They seem to be slightly less enthusiastic than a B-.That said, if “why would you do that?” IS the best joke in there, then I suspect you’re being overly generous, due to an excess of holiday spirit, but who can blame you, eh.
You seem to have enjoyed it more than Vox did. They seem to be slightly less enthusiastic than a B-.That said, if “why would you do that?” IS the best joke in there, then I suspect you’re being overly generous, due to an excess of holiday spirit, but who can blame you, eh.
You seem to have enjoyed it more than Vox did. They seem to be slightly less enthusiastic than a B-.That said, if “why would you do that?” IS the best joke in there, then I suspect you’re being overly generous, due to an excess of holiday spirit, but who can blame you, eh.
“a talking heads documentary where various familiar faces tell obvious jokes over familiar footage of this last particular year in hell.”Yup, despite the pedigree and how much I like the actors this was the inverse of ‘I love the ‘90s’ and even missed great opportunities for jokes. (i.e. for all the promises tech made about delivery drones here’s the perfect opportunity to use them and they are nowhere.)Plus the timeline and area of interest were confused (U.S. vs U.K. vs the world?)There is something of a greater truth about the most average person in the world. It really feels like her responses and how she was affected by every event could’ve been explored more.
This might have been good, say, if handled by Jon Stewart-era Daily Show writers.
Yeah, but after The Venture Bros. and Palm Springs I’d watch Cristin Milioti in an Olive Garden ad (which she says would describe her family fairly accurately).
‘Necessary’? Probably not, but I had a lot of fun watching it.
I get that he went for the lowest hanging fruit of the year (in a year of very low hanging fruit) but I don’t really understand these complaints about a tv comedy show not being “necessary” enough. Which of the previous screenwipes were necessary?I’m currently (finally! 🙂 ) enjoying Orphan Black very much but I would not describe any of it as “necessary”.Which is the necessary Netflix content, so that I can prioritise it?
I had the same feeling watching this that I did watching Colbert’s President Show, namely, that the parts were greater than the sum. I LOL’ed throughout the show but kept looking at my watch wondering when it would end. I understand the need to laugh at the last year but since a lot of us will be left with at least a mild form of PTSD from it, it’s probably just better left forgotten.
I watched this last night and I thought it was really well done, knowing that it was created in a pandemic and had to have been finished like a month ago, at the latest.Hugh Grant was great. If I have any takeaway from this, is that we need more Hugh Grant in 2021. But not in 2022, I’ll be bored of him by then. But 2021? More Hugh.
Diane Morgan explaining Election Night coverage as a complicated and boring game show was probably the best bit for me. “They win if they flip one of the red or blue states over and it turns out there’s a different color on the back? And the rules must be very complicated because they explain them every ten minutes” along with footage of poor Steve Kornacki and his wrinkled khakis was pretty great.I think, on the whole, I’m not really ready to laugh about this year yet. I mean, yes, I’ve laughed at (and made) some dark jokes as anyone does to get through something like this, but then I’m quickly dragged back to the reality of a family member or friend getting COVID and it stops being funny. All in all, it kind of felt like when VH1 did the Remember the 90s shows in, like, 2003. Give it time to be funny again, man.
Hugh Grant was pretty great and the Dr. and the Average Person had some funny moments as well. The bagging on Biden was a little one note.
I’m glad to see this project get a B- from the AV Club because they are considerably tough and particular when it comes to assigning grades.I’m only 10 minutes into the feature and I’m loving it. It balances a nearly perfect tone, imo. After watching 10 minutes I checked some of the sites that we rely upon to tell us what and why we should like anything and I found those reviews wanting. In particular, InidieWire telling me this wasn’t ‘zany’ enough filled me with an unexpected surplus of disgust. I don’t want or need a “zany” perspective of this past year. I don’t think it would be appropriate nor do I think there’s a writer or director that could pull this kind of magic out of a badly beaten hat. And, of course, there are the usual snobs who are snobs because they, themselves, are such woeful Platonists that they could never bother themselves to do the impossible they expect from everything else.So yes, a goodly B-.
I didn’t hate this, but we know Charlie Brooker’s capable of much funnier and more pointed satire. I got a couple of decent laughs in, but too many of the jokes were soft and obvious, and that’s about all I have to offer.