I’ve heard people say that when you experience great art you can feel it physically: you burst into tears in a gallery, feel warmth spreading behind your ribs at the crescendo of an aria. What does it mean, then, that a few minutes into the long-awaited third series of Euphoria (HBO, Mon), I found myself retching violently? Later we will consider this question at length.
In the meantime, let’s acknowledge that Euphoria is one of the most important TV shows of the past decade. Like Skins for me, or Dawson’s Creek for those a little older, or Neighbours for those a little older than that, this show captured the zeitgeist for a microgeneration of teenagers. Like Skins, it has an ensemble cast and, like Skins, is pretty bleak: all drug addiction, violence and sex.
Since the previous series aired, half of the cast have become properly old-school, A-list famous: Jacob Elordi, Sydney Sweeney, Zendaya. This, of course, makes filming tricky, so it has been four years since we last saw this gaggle of teenage Californian misfits on our screens. Now they are in their twenties. “A lot of people ask what I’ve been up to since high school,” Rue (Zendaya) says in the opening moments of this new series, a nod perhaps to the periodic bubbles of discontent from superfans tired of waiting. “And, honestly, nothing good.”
Nothing good indeed. We arrive back to find that Rue is working as a drugs mule, paying back a debt by swallowing balloons full of white powder and driving across the Mexican border. Early on we watch this young woman, whom we last saw getting clean from her teenage drug addiction, struggling not to throw up as she forces the balloons down her gullet with the help of a glass of water and a bottle of lubricant. I had been wondering how Euphoria would still manage to shock after the high drama of the previous series. “Yep, that’ll do it,” I thought. Then I too started retching violently.
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Nothing good is happening to any of the other characters either. Rue’s ex-girlfriend, Jules (Hunter Schafer), has become a sugar baby and we watch as one of her clients wraps her naked body head to toe in clingfilm. School friends Nate (Elordi) and Cassie (Sweeney) are engaged, and Cassie has become an OnlyFans model to fund the $50,000 of flowers ($50,000 of bloody flowers!) she believes her wedding requires. Specifically, we are besieged by scenes of Cassie dressed up as a sexy dog, parading round on a lead, photographed by her long-suffering housekeeper.
The housekeeper is a fun touch. The rest of it? Oh, I don’t know. I feel a little jaded by the whole thing. Sugar babies, OnlyFans: it’s all social commentary by numbers. There’s none of the youthful spark that made the first two series so defining for a generation. Some of the acting is fantastic — Sweeney and Zendaya in particular. But for the first couple of episodes I am not wholly convinced I care about what any of these kids are up to.
Episode three starts to look up — mildest of spoilers ahead. We witness the wedding between Nate and Cassie: two people who should absolutely not be getting married. Alanna Ubach does a spectacular turn as Cassie’s mother, spending their walk down the extravagantly beflowered aisle bemoaning her failed marriage. “Ah, I remember waiting to walk down the aisle towards your father just like today, filled with hope and aspiration, all the smiling people, it was so joyous,” she mutters with a sour little smile to her petrified daughter, “And there I was, never realising it was the last happy moment I’d share with your father.”
It’s in smart little interpersonal moments like this that Euphoria thrives. By the end of the episode, though, we are back to dull shock tactics. Again, there’s a scene that makes me physically recoil. No gagging this time. So that’s something.
If you too would rather watch the delicate moments of a dark family comedy than Sweeney parading round on a lead, can I suggest you watch Bait (Prime Video) instead? Riz Ahmed plays Shah Latif, a struggling British-Pakistani actor. Latif is papped on his way out of an unsuccessful audition to be the next James Bond, thus creating a wave of excitement and keeping himself in the running for the role. We follow him over the next couple of days as his sanity disintegrates under the pressure.
I had assumed Bait would be a comic examination of fame and ego in the long television tradition of I Love Lucy and Extras and it is to some extent. More importantly, it is a wonderful and surrealist portrait of family life and of the interplay between cultures.
It is also funny, in no small part down to the supporting cast: Guz Khan as Shah’s wheeler-dealer cousin, who is attempting to use his relative’s new-found fame to advertise his Muslim alternative to Uber, and Sajid Hasan as Shah’s father, who is perplexed by the whole thing. “Did Craig Daniel die?” he asks deadpan on learning that his son is up for the role of a lifetime.
Ahmed is the star and creator of this series. It feels like his masterpiece in the classical sense: a show bringing together the skills and themes that have shaped his career. Bait could only be made by an actor at the height of his powers. You need a lot of professional confidence to pull off a show in which a Muslim man becomes emotionally dependent on a severed pig’s head that speaks to him in the voice of Patrick Stewart.
You also need to have the trust of the industry. Almost nobody in television is taking risks at the moment. This show, with its interweaving of hallucination, dreams and reality, is the biggest TV risk I’ve seen for a while and it pays off entirely.
For a different portrait of fame and one from a different generation, I enjoyed Miriam Margolyes Made Me Me (BBC2, Mon). Filmed and edited on phones and laptops, this show was also pleasingly different to anything else. Essentially, the director and producer Simon Draper turned up to make a podcast with the actress and national treasure Margolyes, 84, but instead ended up filming chaotic and personal glimpses of her life over the course of two years.
Simon Draper and Miriam MargolyesBBC/Zinc Television London Ltd
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this show. I have always found Margolyes, with her farting and swearing and talking about her boobs, a bit twee. There’s a fair bit of that here, but the documentary also offered a moving snapshot of friendship, ageing and professional life. “I’ve got so many friends with cancer, I’m spending all my time either comforting the relatives after they have died or comforting them and saying they are not going to die. But sometimes they do,” Margolyes said. The show is full of moments like that.
Draper and his editor, Gwyn Jones, were clear that they had no idea what they were setting out to do when they started making this film. Whatever it is they have captured here, it is really quite beautiful at times.
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