Section:GDN 12 PaGe:14 Edition Date:190807 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/8/2019 16:23 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Guardian
14 Wednesday 7 August 2019
It was instrumental in making her a
household name; now Channel 4 is
marking the 10th anniversary of Jade
Goody’s death – the 27-year-old died in
2009 from cervical cancer – with a three-
part series. It retraces the trajectory of
her fame as a polarising participant in the
third season of Big Brother in 2002 and
maps it to wider social changes across
the UK at a time when the tabloid press
and the rise of reality TV combined to
create a conveyor belt of instant celebs.
Graeme VirtueRemarkable Places
to Eat
8pm, BBC Two
Fred Sirieix only just
manages to contain
his excitement in the
company of Nisha Katona
(the CEO of Mowgli
Restaurants ) on a trip
to San Sebastián. They
dine on the world’s
fi nest tortilla and make
a pilgrimage to temple
of gastronomy Mugaritz,
where Yoda-like chef
Andoni Luis Aduriz works
his magic. Mike BradleyOrangutan Jungle
School
8pm, Channel 4
It is all go for the lovable
creatures of the orangutan
rehab centre. There is
drama as baby Alejandra
damages her eyes when
she falls from a tree. New
mum Dilla hasn’t had
the easiest time with her
young daughter and the
vets try to reintroduce
the pair, while also caring
for Erik, who is suff ering
from an infection.
Hannah VerdierSacred Wonders
9pm, BBC One
A TV tour of the world’s
most sacred places of
worship may not be
a new idea , but this
one manages to fi ndintriguing perspectives.
The promising opener
investigates Angkor Wat
in Cambodia , the Easter
parade through the streets
of Málaga and the tough
path to ordination for a
Buddhist monk. MBMake
9pm, Sky Arts
Why do people create?
It is at once a simple and
a complex question. Few
human activities are as
fulfi lling as the creation
of art , yet few lifestyles
lend themselves so
obviously to neurosis and
self-doubt. This feature-
length documentary
poses the question to
artists in a variety of fi elds
and wonders whether
a healthy artistic life
is actually possible.
Phil HarrisonGameFace
10.05pm, Channel 4
Last time, our frustrated
singleton Marcella had to
dress up as a monk. This
week she is in a TV ad that
pays so well she winds
up almost too wrecked to
attend her creative writing
class. Cue a harrowing
session with life coach
Frances and an invitation
to the party from hell.
Roisin Conaty: comedy
genius. MBFace-off ...
Hunter Schafer
and Zendaya
in EuphoriaJade: The Reality Star
Who Changed Britain
9pm, Channel 4
And
another
thingNow that the
University
Challenge
off -season is
fi nally over,
I’m enjoying
bringing my
one-answer-
an-episode
game back to
Monday nights.Review Euphoria,
Sky Atlantic
loathing Rue, in what is a truly astonishing, mesmerising
performance, upending every expectation of what she
could do.
Rue has been in rehab for the summer, following
an accidental overdose, and after a period of being
clean, her fi rst mission at home is to get as high as she
possibly can once more. She does so with the precision
of a professional. Euphoria has a tendency to go off on
dream-like tangents, which is both self-conscious and
charming. One of Rue’s drug dealers is a child with a
tattooed face and a vocabulary made almost entirely
of chemical formulas; he is yet to be explained, but his
presence adds to the overall woozy feel. Every character
here is hyper-articulate, quippy and analytical, using
glibness as a defence against the many wounding
experiences with which they are not yet able to cope.
“Once he tried to fi nger me on the dancefl oor without
my permission, but, it’s America,” says Rue, dr ily, of
the furious jock Nate, a sinister presence for whom the
words “daddy issues” do not even come close.
The controversy that accompanied Euphoria’s debut
on HBO centred on the assumption that it was aimed at
teenage viewers, and perhaps even younger. If that were
the case, it makes substance-fuelled house parties look
as appealing as following that paper boat down the drain
just because a clown told you to, so I’m not sure there is
much to worry about. But I’m also not even sure that it
works as well for a young audience as it does for those
of us who can look back with relief that this painful,
dramatic part of life is over.
Euphoria will certainly not appeal to all tastes,
but it is far less brash than it has been made out to
be. There are deep sophistications hidden within its
more straightforwardly angsty digressions. When Rue
meets her new best friend, Jules (Hunter Schafer),
who has just moved to the suburbs, it becomes a semi-
romantic adventure and the series’ ability to conjure
up the intoxicating vitality of relationships like that is
remarkable. When Jules meets an older man for sex, the
abuse of power is complicated and the show is all the
more powerful for resisting the urge to be didactic about
it. Rue is a scammer and a hedonist, but she still feels
guilty about what she is putting her family through. The
heroically droll Kat promises hidden depths. For all of
its bleak vision, sympathy is not in short supply, and it is
hard not to begin to root for these kids to fi ght their way
through to the other side.
Regardless of whether your teenage years were spent
drinking cider in a fi eld, playing video games online with
friends, studying hard to master a musical instrument
or, as here, dissecting brutal sexual experiences in a
culture of constant surveillance, there is a fundamental
truth shared by almost everyone: adolescence is horribly
cruel, and sweetly naive, in ever-shifting combinations
of the two. If there’s one thing Euphoria understands
perfectly, it’s that.★★★★☆
TV and radio
F
ew new series have achieved such notoriety
with quite the same speed as Euphoria ,
the teen-populated US drama that is so
explicit in its weary portrait of drug use
and sex that it makes Skins look positively
Victorian. This pilot episode serves as both
a taste and a warning: if you can accept that it depicts its
world with the fl ippancy of an Instagram scroll, then its
rewards are vast, particularly in terms of its emotional
depth. But early on it brims with pills, drink, apps, erect
penises, loving sex, cruel sex and nude pics, ever present
and lurking, but horrifyingly casual, as if they are an
inexorable part of these particular fi ctional, middle-
class, suburban teenagers’ existences.
Euphoria is far better than its surface look-at-me
neediness, though. It opens with a heavy teen-angst
monologue that points out one of the most horrifying
aspects of the whole aff air, at least for this particular
viewer – that its protagonists were mostly born after
9/11. Rue is our lead, an omniscient narrator who
weaves with us in and out of her peers’ lives. She has
mental health issues that have been variously
diagnosed and medicated, but which she prefers to
address with her own risky prescription of illegal
substances. “I know it may all seem sad, but guess what?
I didn’t build this system. Nor did I fuck it up,” she
intones, with all the wisdom of a wordy 16-year-old
trying on her own maturity for size. The former Disney
star Zendaya is reinvent ed as the self-destructive, self-Zendaya shines in
pill-popping teen
drama that makes
Skins look staid
Rebecca
Nicholson
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