The author and comedian on his lockdown viewing, including a Tiger King binge, and why today’s greatest screen creations are animated
Like many, I began lockdown by bingeing on Tiger King, which remains one of the most extraordinary pieces of TV I’ve ever seen – although I’ve become disenchanted with the, ahem, lionisation of it since, particularly the reflexive mass-hatred of the only significant woman in it. Nonetheless, it’s a hilariously disturbing portrait of just how wrong a self-enclosed world can go.
I haven’t watched many films. I saw Once Upon a Time in
Hollywood, which felt from another era. By which I mean, not the 1960s but from when it was made, pre-coronavirus – Tarantino’s retro worldview may now itself be retro. I also watched the extraordinary 2015 documentary about
North Korea, Under the Sun, by the
Russian film-maker Vitaly Mansky [now on
Amazon Prime Video]. The film’s power comes from simply letting the camera run between scenes, thus showing the way the state handlers cack-handedly try and manufacture those scenes. It is intensely slow, but hilarious and heartbreaking.