IF YOU ’ VE BEEN paying close attention to TV lately, you may have noticed some new twists on conventional narratives. When contestants on benign quiz shows are asked how they’ll spend their winnings, the answer is often ‘paying off my debts’. House-builds started in good faith on Grand Designs before the economy stalled routinely end the show a quarter completed or abandoned. The cost of living crisis is now a very real telly staple, and not just on the news.
The Curse, an exquisite black comedy starring Emma Stone, is the first proper attempt to skewer the depths some people plumb while exploiting desperate times. It’s funny, acerbic and small ‘p’ political. And big ‘p’ painful. Stone gets the role of her life, playing Whitney Siegel, a fragile reality TV presenter who’s banking her professional future on a paper-thin format twinning home renovations with eco-activism.
Her collapsing marriage to co-host Asher (Nathan Fielder), the husband with the micro-penis (dissected early in close-up detail), is presented as the superficial story arc. Their Machiavellian bond is metaphor in this bleakly addictive drama with much bigger ideas about the collapse of America. The Curse doesn’t ever make direct mention of what happened after a reality TV star became US President, because it doesn’t have to. You can work that out for yourself.
The Seigels’ version of ‘ build a wall’ is ‘ build a community’. Under the guise of philanthropic entertainment, Whitney and Asher exploit the Latinx community in Espanola, New Mexico, promising jobs and houses to the broke. With the aid of shady producer Dougie (Benny Safdie : amazing ), they’re secretly bolstering a get-rich-quick side-hustle, building flimsy eco-homes.
If this all sounds deeply unsexy, it’s meant to. The emblematic curse of the show’s tit
