Death to 2020 (2020) – TV Review

‘Death to 2020 is a comedy event that tells the story of the dreadful year that was — and perhaps still is? This landmark documentary-style special weaves together some of the world’s most (fictitious) renowned voices with real-life archival footage spanning the past 12 months.’

Charlie Brooker, now famous as the writer and creator of dystopian sci-fi series Black Mirror (2011), made his name on the BBC with his weekly and yearly ‘Wipes’ where he would satirically skewer the events of the past week or year, and they became a huge hit. In May of 2020, he returned to the format for the BBC’s ‘Anti-Viral Wipe’ to take a look at the pandemic so far and add Brooker’s unique spin on things. However, he is very much a Netflix star these days and here he steps purely behind the camera to write (and appear via voice occasionally) a satirical look at the incredibly eventful year of 2020. He has assembled an all-star cast and a slightly different format, in an attempt to try and capture the insanity of the past year.

There is a cast of all stars here who are playing ‘talking heads’ who are giving their own unique perspective on the year, with the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Grant and Lisa Kudrow taking on roles, and all acting as certain persona’s either from stereotypical documentaries or from the year of 2020. Diane Morgan, frequent collaborator with Brooker, also appears but not in her traditional ‘Wipe’ character of Philomena Cunk and she really fades into the background without that role. For me, the stand out by far is Cristin Milioti, playing a white suburban woman in America, who slowly reveals herself to be the stereotypical ‘Karen’, who expresses deeply racist and dangerous beliefs, and Milioti plays this transformation from seemingly normal person to quickly unhinged, with great skill and really steals the show.

The show does have some funny moments, mostly due to the talented writers and impressive cast, but it lacks the energy and bite that we have become used to when Charlie Brooker steps into this genre, so it all falls a bit flat and ends up feeling like a collection of all the jokes that people have already made about the events of the year. It is evident that with the bigger budgets, Brooker is able to have fun and great a strong visual scale, as well as attract the biggest name stars around, but it seems like the actual quality of content and particularly his incredibly unique creative voice, seem to be regressing and becoming more generic.

Brooker and team certainly were some of the best candidates to tackle this sort of material, and yet even they couldn’t pull it off, and I truly feel that one of the main reasons for that is how truly extreme and bizarre the times we are living through are. We are incredibly online as a society right now, so few people actually miss major news events, and when the news events are as ridiculous and scary as the last year, it makes it much more difficult for successful satire to really cut through and offer a unique perspective on things, but that is where you need the very best talent to be at their best, and that just wasn’t the case here.

Rating = 2.5/5