Through the milky panes we can see the shadows of an
The wall behind Kwame is comprised ofįour translucent windows. The walls are a lifeless yellow and the roomįeels tired, worn down through usage. This collision of the mundane workaday and raw trauma keeps It is an auditory reminder than the average workday is churning on, all whilst someone is heaving their trauma out onto that black table in interview room one, ready to be dissected under the unsympathetic, disinterested light of the police officer – an officer who conducts half of the interview standing near the door, itching to leave. We are made hyperaware of invasive background sounds telephones ringing, conversations uttered. Under the lurid yellow light of the interview room, Kwame sits behind a large black table: its mass obtrusiveness seems to symbolise the barrier between the justice system and the people it is supposed to protect. Magnificent and delicate symbolism operates throughout the scene to expose the flaws in the way the law handles sexual assault victims. It crackles with awkwardness, sadness and disillusion. The scene is a masterpiece of discomfort. Three weeks later we see Kwame’s attempt to report it to the police. He has consensual sex with ‘Hornyman808’, but the same man rapes him later in the evening. Kwame, one of Arabella’s close friends, explores the limitlessness of his sexuality with frequent Grindr hook-ups. And that “still burns like it was yesterday”. Terry “took the bait’” Her consent was gained through dishonesty. What Terry believed to be a spontaneous, unpremeditated encounter, was in fact planned and predatory. But in a flashback we see that the two “strangers” appear to secretly know each other – “there was something about the way they left together”, Terry admits later. Throughout the series, we hear Terry boast of her threesome in Italy – how she met two strangers and they went back to her hotel “and did things that prudish bitches don’t do”. Sexual assault can live hidden, unnamed in memories for years. It can be disguised with words to look ‘harmless’. Sexual assault can be quiet, even subtle. As she later describes him, Zain is “not rape-adjacent, or aĬoel reminds us that sexual assault is not always staring down at us from a bathroom stall.
They carry on their relationship, but whenĪrabella discovers discussions of ‘stealthing’ online, she realises the she hasīeen assaulted. He gaslights her intoīelieving it’s not a big deal. That he took the condom off without telling her. When Arabella sleeps with a colleague, Zain, she finds out after I love that Coel also explores kinds of abuse that don’t typically She pieces together that night, and navigates her denial, her despair, her rage, Of her, raping her in the bathroom stalls. The next morning all she remembers is a man on top Her phone ringing with invites, she goes to meet some friends on a night out.
#KWAME I MAY DESTROY YOU SERIES#
The series begins with Arabella struggling to deliver aĭraft of her book to her publishers. And we see sexual abuse in all its sickening ordinariness. And Coel refuses to offer us the sanitised, tidy femininity we are used to seeing on television: we see things such as Arabella on the toilet chatting to her friends we see period sex in all its realism. Its characters are flawed and funny – they make us laugh at the most painful and surprising times they can be selfish, insensitive, dishonest they swear, smoke, drink too much. It deals with sexual assault in a way I have never seen on television.
#KWAME I MAY DESTROY YOU FULL#
It’s full of metaphor and meaning and feeling. It’s funny and it’s sad and it’s thought-provoking. Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You is what television’s been missing.