“The Curse”, almost unwatchable, completely unmissable

The Curse, a 10 part com­e­dy dra­ma, or dram­e­dy if you will, is the ulti­mate in car-crash tele­vi­sion. It’s hor­ren­dous­ly uncom­fort­able to have to watch, and yet you can’t take your eyes off of it. 

Cre­at­ed, writ­ten and pro­duced by a com­bi­na­tion of its three prin­ci­pals, the series revolves around the mar­riage of Emma Stone and Nathan Field­er, and the real­i­ty TV show his col­lege friend Ben­ny Safdie is mak­ing about them and the work they do. 

Stone and Field­er are a patch­work quilt of every con­ceiv­able lib­er­al urge. They buy up prop­er­ties in under-ser­viced, periph­er­al sub­urbs – i.e. the ones where black and brown skinned peo­ple eke out their mea­gre exis­tences — and replace exist­ing dwellings with eco-friend­ly, ultra-mod­ern and over-priced monstrosities. 

Their end­less talk of invest­ing in local com­mu­ni­ties and nur­tur­ing indige­nous tal­ent does noth­ing to hide the fact that all they are in fact engaged in is a rapa­cious gen­tri­fi­ca­tion scheme designed to make them a shed-load of mon­ey, that they’re try­ing for­lorn­ly to dress up in lib­er­al frills and bows.

As the episodes progress, each aspect of their arche­typ­al­ly lib­er­al façade is unmasked to reveal a mon­strous mess of neu­ro­sis fed on an entrenched sense of enti­tled privilege.

And through­out all of which, it’s – at least ini­tial­ly – unclear whether Safdie intends glee­ful­ly expos­ing this in the real­i­ty show he’s mak­ing around their exploits. Or whether he too is caught up in the glare of their ambi­tion and the vor­tex of their solipsism. 

Could he con­ceiv­ably turn out to be even more self-cen­tred than they are? Or is there the chance that some­thing inter­est­ing might actu­al­ly result from what he’s shooting?

We are then very much on the same ter­rain that Ricky Ger­vais mapped out in the orig­i­nal The Office series, and where Curb Your Enthu­si­asm went in some of its ear­li­er episodes. Gen­uine­ly painful to behold, and absolute­ly riveting. 

This is what tele­vi­sion can do when three incred­i­bly gift­ed indi­vid­u­als decide to pool their tal­ents to expose what lies under­ground, beneath the sur­face of the soci­ety we’ve con­struct­ed for our­selves. And the less you know about any of the par­tic­u­lars, the more you’ll get out of watch­ing it. 

Watch the trail­er for The Curse here:

Sign up for a sub­scrip­tion right or below and I shall keep you post­ed every month on All the very best and worst in film, tele­vi­sion and music!