The Medium is Not Enough

In the US: Sundays, 10.30pm, HBO. Starts October 9
In the UK: Acquired by Sky Atlantic. Will air in October

Don’t let my TV-set avatar fool you. I’m not actually an everyday household appliance. Let me reveal to you now that I’m actually a middle-aged, middle-class, white guy from London who doesn’t get out much and who’s never spent longer than a week in the US.

Now I think about it, you probably worked all that out for yourselves already.

Anyway, that ‘revelation’ means that it shouldn’t surprise you that I have no idea what it’s like to be a twentysomething, educated, single black American woman. I can guess, but you might as well be asking me the length of the Emperor of China’s nose.

To be fair, though, judging by Insecure, twentysomething, educated, single black American women aren’t quite sure what it’s like to be a twentysomething, educated, single black American woman – or at least, they know what it’s like but they’re pretty sure it’s different from what it’s supposed to be like.

Based on her own web series, Awkward Black Girl, Insecure is co-written by and stars Issa Rae, who plays a well meaning member of an outreach programme for inner city schools. The only black member of the programme, she finds herself seen by her white colleagues as their ‘in’ to the ghetto, even though the kids all mock this college graduate for ‘not talking like a black girl’. Meanwhile, her boyfriend of five years is still trying to get his act together and her attorney best friend is looking for a man – perhaps any man – who doesn’t respond with ‘I’m not looking for a relationship at the moment’ when pressed for any degree of commitment.

The show is co-written by former Daily Show correspondent Larry Wilmore, who’s established himself as a guarantee of clever, insightful comedy writing about African-American life with shows such as black-ish and his own show, The Nightly Show. Together, Rae and he have created something that’s not really laugh out loud funny, but which has the ring of authenticity, as well as sympathetic, recognisable characters.

Rae is herself a top performer, successfully depicting someone who’s navigating through all of society’s stereotypes about women, American-Americans and American-American women. One stand out scene has Rae rehearsing for a night out, running through a gamut of different ‘black women’, including one fairly decent English black woman (“No, you drive on the wrong side of the road”), before collapsing into a heap of self-doubt (“No, that’s too aggressive”).

Will I stick with it? Maybe. It’s got a lot to say that’s interesting, but I’m potentially too far away (continents and decades) for it to truly grab me. But I will say that not being a big BET or OWN viewer, I’ve not seen anything like it before and new always interests me. Give it a whirl, because it might be new for you, too.

In the US: Fridays, 10/9c, Syfy

Syfy’s new mantra may be ‘fewer, bigger, better’, a tactic that’s already given us the likes of The Magicians and Childhood’s End, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to stop being the home to z-grade, made-in-Canada schlock such as Killjoys, Hunters and Dark Matter. 

In particular, taking a leaf out of frequent contributor the Asylum’s playbook, Syfy does love to develop non-copyright infinging shows that are still rather similar to other successful shows, but which are generally rather cheap and terrible, the most successful of these being Z Nation.

Without a huge amount of thought, Syfy now gives us Van Helsing – not to be confused with the rather similarly plotted Wynonna Earp or the identically named movie Van Helsing – in which the daughter of noted vampire hunter Abraham Van Helsing wakes up in 2019 and discovers that the western half of the US has been over-run with vampires thanks to a volcanic eruption this year. Hmm, sounds a bit like the quite popular The Strain, doesn’t it? What a coincidence.

Notably, Miss Van Helsing now appears to have super powers and do martial arts and stuff. Could she be the saviour prophesied, who’ll save humanity from the Feeders? You’ll be asking if she’s the Chosen One next.

The keenest and most astute of you will probably guess that Van Helsing bares no resemblance whatsoever to Bram Stoker’s Dracula or the nice little Dutch scientist Van Helsing who appears in it. Unlike Stoker’s vampires, the vampires of this piece can’t roam in daylight without burning up and have a lot more in common with Walking Dead zombies than any vampires you might have come across in your media travels. 

Instead, the show is an ultra-low budget, “seven fighty, diverse people in rooms” kind of show in which people shout the plot at each other in between moaning about the collapse of civilisation and their dead loved ones before shooting one another. Fight scenes are simultaneously reasonable yet dreadful, with everything looking just fine and well choreographed until something terribly embarrassing takes place that makes you think they just didn’t know what to do next – either that or they couldn’t afford more than one piece of paper per fight to map out the moves on.

Everything about Van Helsing is derivative. Literally the only good thing about it is the surprisingly good soundtrack. Watching it is painful and, worst of all, hugely boring. It even makes me yearn for the comparatively high quality, absolutely low quality Wynonna Earp. 

Avoid.