Death To...

Death To 2021 shows Netflix limiting Charlie Brooker

Despite offering a commentary on 2021's news stories and debates, the mockumentary only comments on cultural phenomena induced by Netflix productions.

Review: Death To 2021, Netflix

Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe end-of-year reports for the BBC were essential viewing. Last year though he did a caustic commentary for Netflix, Death To 2020, without appearing onscreen himself, which didn't quite have the same sardonic sucker punches. Not for English viewers anyway. It seemed to be aimed at an American audience. And now with Death To 2021, there is a further shift.

Death To 2021 review

More Trump and anti-vaxx jokes? Come back, Charlie Brooker!

Death To 2021 shocks viewers with Prince Philip joke

Death To 2021 viewers were left with dropped jaws after the show joked about Prince Philip's death.

Death To 2020 puts our torments in the rear-view mirror

Charlie Brooker gives the Screenwipe treatment to an annus so horribilis that it has frequently outflanked satire - but the retrospective treatment sometimes seems too easy.

Many had high hopes when they saw the name Charlie Brooker linked to Netflix and a review of 2020: hopes of a Screenwipe of sorts, with frissons of Black Mirror. What we got in Death To 2020 was what some might call politely a salmagundi; what others might describe rudely as a mess.

One problem was that, for all the talent involved, there was no Charlie Brooker talking us drily through. It was as if a Netflix algorithm had somehow conflated this with the US show Saturday Night Live, which, through repetitively pointing out weekly since 2016 that Donald Trump was thick and nasty, famously brought about his 2018 impeachment and subsequent bell tower death.

Lisa Kudrow, Samuel L Jackson, Hugh Grant - all terrific, given the bad lines they were given. Kudrow's spokesperson was funny the first time she challenged with an airy defiance the existence of recorded facts. By the seventh repetition of exactly the same gag... not so much. How many ways are there to say that Joe Biden is "old", and how screamingly amusing will that saying-so of an established fact ever have been in the first place? After the year we wish never was, the recap we wish never was.

Death To 2020 review

Charlie Brooker's year-in-review Netflix special should have been an open goal. Instead, says Ed Cumming, it doesn't know whether it is playing to an American audience or a British one, and pleases neither.

Death To 2020: mockumentary proves comedy's demise

2020 has been a brutal year, but one that offers huge potential for humor. However, Death To 2020's tepid, establishment-friendly take on the past 12 months feels like the final nail in the coffin of true comedy.

Death To 2020 review

Of course, some will argue that we shouldn't be laughing at the horror-show in which we're all so inextricably mired, but I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected to. Chances are, you will to.

Death To 2020 is a failure of imagination

The special assumes viewers will be invested enough in its premise (phew, 2020!) that character development can start and end with a job title and a goofy name.