The series is incredibly smart at exploring the ways the world asks us to just let these boundary violations slide, until it actively makes us put up with something we never wanted in the first place.Įvery episode features a moment where someone’s consent is violated.
Sexual assault is hundreds of times worse than somebody you’ve asked not to hang out with you continuing to hang out with you - but both violate the boundaries you’ve painstakingly built around yourself. The show is not about rape but, rather, survival, and all of the ways we find to withstand even the most mundane violations of our consent. “A young writer is the victim of rape” is maybe not what you’d expect to be at the center of even a dark comedy, but I May Destroy You’s strength lies in how unflinching it is in staring directly at Arabella’s trauma, while also allowing just enough humor around the edges to keep from becoming pitch black. The story was loosely inspired by her own sexual assault, which happened when she was at the height of an early career upswing following her critically acclaimed series Chewing Gum. In addition to starring in I May Destroy You, Coel is the show’s creator, writer, and co-director. And with nine episodes of its 12-episode first season having aired in the US, it’s safe to say this is one of the best shows of the year. Who’s going to destroy who? Each and every episode answers that question a little bit differently. Yeah, she’s been through a lot, but the world keeps trying to get her to move on, even if nobody would be so gauche as to say that.Īt the center of I May Destroy You, which aired on the BBC in the UK (where it was primarily made) and airs on HBO in the US, is the very vagueness contained in its title. She has a draft due, after all, and her friends need her for emotional support. The slog is the only path available to her, but others around her, no matter how sympathetic they are, kind of need her to just be the person she was before her assault. I May Destroy You begins with Arabella’s life being ripped in two by a sexual assault she first tries to compartmentalize, before trying to simply slog through the trauma as best she can.
Arabella’s encounter with her ex isn’t nearly as scarring as other boundary violations on the show, but he’s still going to have to fix his door. The door-kicking incident is one of the show’s most blatant and physical displays of its core idea: No matter what boundary you put up between yourself and another person, that other person might knock it right down and leave you feeling violated. When her stylish boot nearly kicks the door in, the apartment’s occupant, her ex-boyfriend, opens it. She’s been locked out of an apartment where she was intending to crash, and she’s not particularly happy about it. In “Line Spectrum Border,” the eighth episode of Michaela Coel’s mesmerizing, borderline-perfect dramedy, I May Destroy You, Arabella, a young writer played by Coel herself, attempts to kick down a door. The British import brings searing emotion and dry wit to a story about sexual assault.
#I MAY DESTROY YOU DAVID TV#
HBO’s I May Destroy You might be the best TV show of the year. But when her drink is spiked with a date-rape drug, she must question and rebuild every element of her life. Set in London, where gratification is only an app away, the story centers on Arabella (Coel), a carefree, self-assured Londoner with a group of great friends, a boyfriend in Italy, and a burgeoning writing career.
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