Extremely white middle class confession: I’ve never been able to maintain interest in more than one telly show at a time.
I am an individual for whom peak prestige telly has been alienating.
As a somewhat early adopter of the no-telly aesthetic – not to mention being at the whims of the Australian internet infrastructure farce – the ol’ boob tube hasn’t really been my go-to entertainment source since the Buffy shows finished up.
Thus, a decade or two of “must watch or be a pariah at the watercooler!!!11!” hot takes have washed over me like a warm, numbing antiseptic wave of DGAF.
Of course, I’ve dipped in here and there over the years, but have been left nonplussed by the culture of constant mandatory viewing, usually tapping out after an episode or two (see: a list too long to include here).
The advent of binge viewing felt like a punishment, unless suitably medicated.
By and large it’s been one show at a time for me, ever since Joss Whedon hung up his vampire slaying fedora.
HBO’s Watchmen is currently my show.
Disclosure: I have seen approximately three episodes of Damon Lindelof’s oeuvre, combined.
Watchmen, the show, is set thirty odd years after the books.
It’s a world where superheroes were outlawed, but in which cops now wear masks.
White supremacy underpins the show’s narrative, much as it does our present day.
Nothing is really that different, but everything is.
There’s a man in a castle stage managing clones, a superman exiled on Mars and a 105 year old African American man maybe lynched the police chief and just might be the ur superhero in this universe.
They might even all be the same bloke.
But probably not.
The show runs the gamut of Important Concerns, pivoting off, updating and expanding on Co-Creator Dave Gibbons’ work (that one’s for the credits nerds).
The morality of justice and the murky notion of heroism is back under the microscope here, promising to prove irksome to those who like their worldview high contrast.
Which is to say: I despair that there those who still think cop = good guy as much as they think Rorschach, the book’s protagonist, is a hero.
It’s eccentric, it’s educational, it elaborates on and expands the originals in weird and wild ways and that’s just the first two episodes: HBO’s Watchmen is my show.