HBO’s “Fantasmas” from Julio Torres

The best way to enjoy Fan­tas­mas is by know­ing as lit­tle about it before­hand as pos­si­ble. For­tu­nate­ly it’s well nigh impos­si­ble to sumarise so noth­ing you’ll read here will in any way spoil your expe­ri­ence of watch­ing it. 

Osten­si­bly, we’re in a dystopi­an future where every­thing we over 30 something’s had feared has appar­ent­ly come to pass. Every­thing you do is done via your mobile and every­one leads lone­ly lives lived in con­junc­tion with their robot friend come but­ler in exis­ten­tial isolation. 

This is the vista that for­mer Sat­ur­day Night Live per­former Julio Tor­res presents us with as we fol­low what seems to be a video diary of what has become his life. 

He’s an out of work actor slash etc with a per­son­al man­ag­er who is actu­al­ly just role play­ing as his man­ag­er, but is it doing it so con­vinc­ing­ly that she seems to believe that she real­ly is his man­ag­er, and she spends her days try­ing to con­vince him to shell his soul so that he can final­ly afford to pay the rent. 

But the key to life in this world is your Proof of Exis­tence stamp, and he’s res­olute­ly deter­mined not to cave in to the man and get one, so that he can par­take in all of the activ­i­ties that are expect­ed of you here.

It’s both a cel­e­bra­tion of and a pas­tiche of a Gen Z world times a hun­dred that’s only loose­ly con­nect­ed by this nar­ra­tive, and is real­ly just a suc­ces­sion of bril­liant­ly realised skits per­formed by a hand­ful of celebri­ty actors, who are all clear­ly in on the joke, includ­ing Steve Busce­mi, Amy Sedaris, Paul Dano, Emma Stone (who also pro­duces, again, as she did on The Curse, mak­ing her as impres­sive a pro­duc­er as she is an actress) and Natasha Lyonne.

This is the most refresh­ing­ly orig­i­nal and con­sis­tent­ly daz­zling show on tele­vi­sion, and feels like the brighter and slight­ly lighter com­pan­ion piece to Apple’s Sev­er­ance. But looks can be deceiv­ing. Fan­tas­mas is a close as you’re going to get to a show that’s gen­uine­ly Beck­et­t­ian. Enjoy. 

Watch the trail­er for Fan­tas­mas here:

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