CHEER UP, EH? (DEATH TO 2021)

 

Cheer up.

The world in 2021 couldn't have been any worse than it was in 2020, right?

Well, let's consider the evidence or maybe just rely on 'Death to 2021' - Netflix's satirical look at the year that has just gone by.

As in last year's 'Death to 2020', the 'Black Mirror' team of Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones have assembled a team of writers and star studded cast to take a sarcastic look at the previous year's events.

Hugh Grant is back as the pompous, fake historian Tennyson Foss.

Joe Keery returns as the self-obsessed social media influencer Duke Goolies.

Cristin Milioti turns up again as the racist, Trump supporting soccer mom Karen Flowers.

Diane Morgan is back too as the spectacularly ill informed Gemma Nerrick and Samson Bayo returns as the resident scientific commentator Dr Pyrex Flask.

With Laurence Fishburne on board as narrator, Samuel L Jackson, Leslie Jones, Lisa Kudrow Kumail Nanjiani have dropped out.

However Stockard Channing has joined as an alcoholic magazine commentator Penn Parker and Lucy Liu as the Washington correspondent of The Washington Correspondent.

William Jackson Harper takes on the role of tech billionaire Zero Fournine, while Tracey Ullman returns not as Queen Elizabeth but as a Jeanine Pirro style outraged right wing propaganda channel host, Madison Madison.

As in last year's show, the quips come thick and fast with Fishburne's narrator observing 2021 made "2020 feel like a mere prequel".

Grant's character continues to pass off the plots of 'Harry Potter' and 'Star Wars' movies as if they are tales from actual history and fumes about the trend for preferred pronouns, declaring: "I do not dance the wokey cokey!"

As the directors Jack Clough and Josh Ruben tear through a year that saw Capitol Hill stormed by Trump supporters, President Biden inaugurated, COVID lockdowns continue, the Prince Harry and Princess Meghan interview, the phenomenal success of 'Bridgerton' and 'Squid Game,' the messy withdrawal of US and Allied troops from Afghanistan, the return of 007, William Shatner actually enter space and the COP 26 summit in Glasgow, we are exposed to madcap conspiracy theories from the talking heads or just plain stupidity.

Milioti's Karen Flowers now wears an electronic tag as they unearth footage of her inside Capitol Hill smearing her own poo on its walls to write MAGA, arguing "I was writing and that counts as free speech, actually".

She also harasses people at vaccine centres.

On the issue of vaccine scepticism in the US, there's a nice line for Fishburne about Democrats suddenly invoking their right to bear arms while Republicans suddenly no longer favour pricks.

Ullman's Madison Madison throws a strop when asked by Nick Mohammed's fictional director if she has been vaccinated.

She also continues to spin the "Stop the Steal" myth about the election that Donald Trump lost in 2020.

In a brilliant send-up of Pirro and Fox News, Madison asks on her fictional show: "Did Antifa terrorists infiltrate the count in Arizona disguised as voting machines?"

Reflecting on the storming of Congress, Liu's Snook Austin quips that she had never seen anything crazier "and I was in the room when (President George W) Bush knelt before Zod!" 

Keery's influencer Duke Goolies gets behind COP 26 by flying to endangered parts of the world in his private jet to take selfies to highlight climate change.

Gemma Nerrick takes up online dating by Zooming three men.

Not every joke lands this time around, however.

A running gag about music playing every time Samson Bayo's Dr Pyrex Flask talks about COVID quickly runs out of steam.

Jackson Harper's quip about tech billionaires using social media to keep people outraged to remain engaged is sadly true.

At times, 'Death to 2021' doffs its hat a little too much towards its backers.

Why just mention Netflix's 'Bridgerton' and 'Squid Game,' when HBO's 'Friends: The Reunion,' 'The White Lotus' and 'Succession' were among the most talked about TV shows of 2021?

Presumably 'Death to 2021' was in post-production as details emerged of the Christmas parties in Boris Johnson's Government during COVID but its absence seems like missing an open goal.

However as a light hearted look at 2021 and the ridiculousness of the shrill political climate we now inhabit, 'Death to 2021' serves its purpose.

Here's hoping, though, that 2022 is the year when common sense and expertise finally prevails and we don't have to laugh in horror at shows like this.

('Death to 2021' was made available for streaming on Netflix on December 27, 2021)

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