Are You Watching I May Destroy You Yet?

Michaela Coel’s masterpiece is the show of 2020

I May Destroy You
BBC/Val Productions/Natalie Seery

Love you, Normal People, but there’s another British series setting the internet alight: I May Destroy You, written by Michaela Coel, who also stars.

Twitter loses its mind every week as new episodes drop. The Guardian’s TV critic hailed the show as “an extraordinary, breathtaking achievement without a false note in it.” The New Yorker dubbed I May Destroy You “a beguiling study of friendship and casual trauma and writing as a path—albeit not a simple one—to reinvention,” which, while a mouthful, feels as close as any to an accurate description of a series that is about so many things, woven together so intelligently, that it’s entirely beyond pedestrian things like classification.

It’s dark, it’s hilarious, it’s compulsively watchable but wildly unsettling—and, if you’re asking us, it’s the best thing on TV this summer.

What is I May Destroy You about?

Arabella (Michaela Coel), who turned a social media following into a popular book, is attempting to write her follow-up, with little success. Battling writer’s block (and up against a deadline,) she pops out for an hour’s break, meeting up with a friend and his friend for a drink. Fast-forward to the next morning, she wakes up with a gash on her head, and no memory of the night before, save the image of man, standing over her in a bathroom stall, sexually assaulting her.

The consequences of that night—Arabella’s unravelling, the heartbreaking experience of arriving at some approximation of justice for what happened to her—are the narrative arc that drives the following 11 episodes. This seems like heavy, hard-to-watch stuff, and it is, intentionally so. But, because Michaela Coel is a genius, you can’t look away—and, unexpectedly, you will find yourself moved to laughter seconds after scenes so confronting they haunt you for days.

Who is this genius Michaela Coel?

Other than being insanely talented? She’s a 32-year-old British writer and actor who, before I May Destroy You, was known for the acclaimed Chewing Gum, a purposefully cringe-heavy comedy about a 20-something millennial Londoner. Like her first show, I May Destroy You is semi-autobiographical, based on Coel’s own experience of sexual assault while writing the second season of Chewing Gum, which she weaves into a wider exploration of consent, and how society handles the experiences of different people when it is violated in different ways.

While doing that, Coel also manages to build a core set of characters you utterly adore: chaotic, charismatic Arabella; her best friends Terry (Weruche Opia) and Kwame (Paapa Essiedu); complicated in their own ways. She also provides sharp-eyed commentary on everything from influencer culture to classism, self-care to privilege.

What makes I May Destroy You so good?

There’s an ambiguity to the show’s title—quite who is destroying whom is left entirely to the viewer to interpret—that hints at what makes this show so brilliant…and also gives you fair warning that this show might wreck you, in a good way. It doesn’t patronize with easy answers.

In a recent interview with British GQ, Coel spoke about her interest in “exploring boundaries and borders and spectrums,” and the theme of blurred lines and grey areas is one the series returns to again and again to thought-provoking effect. If you watch an episode, and then finding yourself still chewing over something in it hours or even days later? You’re not alone.

Where can you watch I May Destroy You in Canada?

The show is currently airing; there will be 12 half-hour episodes in total. In Canada, I May Destroy You is on Crave, although it does require you to purchase the HBO add-on package. Trust us when we say that $9.99 is worth it, just for this extraordinary bit of TV.


More Summer 2020

MORE life