Death to 2021

Not as funny as last year's and definitely more left wing. Everyone has an agenda, even Netflix. It has its humour, and it's clever narrative on climate change, Covid and the royals. But still, Netflix, please believe in something bigger. Please believe that, similar to the Chinese government, you are hypocrites, promoting socialism and equality for all mankind, but actually closet conservative capitalists, raking in a huge profit for the few and far between.

The media has this year again shown itself to be empty of substance and void of any in depth examination and I was really looking forward to a programme having real guts in its examination of people and subjects. Death to 2021 continued the narrative everyone already hates - a biased one.

Fox News is awful, CNN is awful, neither have anything to do with news - If a satire programme cannot see its own bias towards either of these ideologies, the blind spot becomes the comedy.

Comedy can really bring people together when it shines a light on the absurdities we are all subjected to all the time, especially after a year like this one. This was missed.

Hugh Grant and Diane Morgan are still great but this was a real wasted opportunity.

South Park seems to be the only programme having a real go at showing corporate and political craziness on both sides.

A repeat of quality of Death to 2020, Charlie Brooker's writing is still brilliant, but again isn't as hilarious when performed by US actors. Having Fishbourne as narrator seems a good draw, but ultimately isn't as scathing or as well-timed as Brooker (in his Yearly/Weekly Wipes). Unfortunately Netflix always skews to the US and ignores the UK talents that made the show great in the first place.

US and UK centric, heavily focusing on the former, the main events of 2021 are summarised and put into context, with varying degrees of humour. Diane Morgan easily provides the standout character, who is hilarious in her delivery.

Important and sensitive topics are covered well with a level of explanation hidden below the cartoonish characters. Not as good as Brooker's previous reviews, but better than 2020 and still worth watching.

2022 is just days away as I write this. Netflix promoted this in their popular stream.

I think this will split opinion, much like the satirical "don't look up", people will love or hate it.

I found it funnier than "death to 2020", and didn't expect to find this as funny as I did, but the last four years of the state of the world have become quite surreal, and U. S. politics especially so. Laughing at it is a good "pressure relief valve". There's something to offend everyone!

Where is Charlie Brooker? This is like watching someone copy his previous work but not understanding why it was actually funny.

Sad.

Maybe this in itself is deliberate, making 2021 just that little but more grim.

Bring back the end of year Wipe!