They have sex, and afterwards she makes some clunking, would-be woke references to loving “black guys”. One of the cleverest episodes sees Arabella’s sweet-natured gay friend, Kwame ( Paapa Essiedu), recovering from an assault by a Grindr hook-up, dating a girl. Sexual assault, and the way in which boundaries become blurred, has never been explored on screen as intricately as this. They’re recognisable human beings, not totems. Coel’s characters are black and they’re flawed, because isn’t everyone? They make mistakes, and sometimes behave badly, Arabella included. We are currently at the well-meaning but cringeworthy stage of white, middle-class television commissioners insisting that dramas have black actors, but making sure they’re invariably cast as "good" characters. Worlds separate Arabella and her supercilious publisher, Suzi, though they are both black women. At a febrile moment in the Black Lives Matter debate, a black writer is showing us the myriad ways in which racism manifests itself, but also how reductive the debate can be – race intersects with class, sexuality, gender and wealth. In a world that feels increasingly as if it can only deal in absolutes, when the dreaded " cancel culture" demands that we take a righteous "for" or "against" position, Coel gives us nuance. Every one of these comes with contradictions. It is a meditation on race, sex, consent, friendship and identity. At the start of the series Arabella is working on a new manuscript and Coel recently shared a passage from it, though the words never made it to the screen: “We are the generation that decided, if you won’t look at us, we’ll look at ourselves.” It’s a generation that is often mocked for being self-absorbed but, as far as Coel is concerned, introspection is good for the soul. Arabella’s breakout hit as a writer was called Chronicles of a Fed-Up Millennial. The show pulses with an energy that feels drawn from its London setting – Arabella’s character is sometimes hyper, sometimes drug-fuelled, always searching for something even in her moments of repose – but as the episodes go by you realise it’s not plot that we’re required to follow, but character. Life doesn’t consist of events with neat resolutions, so why should drama? On social media, viewers tried to guess the identity of the rapist: was it her seemingly lovely flatmate? Would that be the twist? But Coel has given us something thrillingly radical. In the hands of another writer, this story could have been a whodunnit as Arabella pieced together the events of that night. At that point, if not before, you’re clear that this drama is going to unusual places. Arabella raises a quizzical eyebrow, gives a little "hmm" and the credits roll. Imagine this happening in a bog-standard drama – ITV’s Liar, say – and the horrified look that would spread across the actress’s face. This realisation comes to Coel’s character, Arabella, at the end of episode one. In 2016, her drink was spiked in a bar and the next day she had a flashback of a man looming over her. I May Destroy You begins as a fictionalised story of Coel’s own sexual assault. She is the writer, executive producer, co-director and star, and she turned down a £1 million offer from Netflix because they would not allow her to retain copyright. That’s not to say she’s presenting us with an unedited stream of consciousness, because she produced 191 drafts before she was satisfied. The show is autobiographical, but that description doesn’t do it justice Coel isn’t so much writing down her thoughts as letting them spill out in an act of therapy as well as creation. Just when you think you have a handle on where it’s going, she does something utterly unexpected. Coel has taken the conventions of episodic drama and binned them. But Michaela Coel’s 12-part series, which reaches its finale on BBC One tonight, is the real deal. "Groundbreaking" is an overused word in television. But then along came I May Destroy You, making Normal People look like a quaint romance from the last century. Based on Sally Rooney’s hit novel, it was a sublime piece of television with two captivating leads, and deserved all the plaudits thrown at it. For a while there, it looked like Normal People was going to be the drama of the year.
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