The last thing television needs is another self-destructive male anti hero who treats everyone like dirt but charms them anyway. Then again, there’s BoJack Horseman (Netflix). For a very funny cartoon about a washed-up acting horse, this is prone to deep misanthropy, although its unremittingly bleak portrait of fame, narcissism and despair only seems to improve with age. Its third season was so dark that, according to its creator, Raphael Bob-Waksberg, some viewers decided they were fed up with BoJack, whose behaviour had finally exhausted their compassion. Season four offered a bit more hope of redemption, but the recent fifth, which may yet prove to be its best, made the decision to keep its morality complicated, to say the least. In an age when taking a stand means shouting over one another in the crudest way, this is a minor revelation.
Then again, if there was ever a setting more suitable for dissecting the bad behaviour of celebrities and the people who enable them, it’s BoJack Horseman. The one-time sitcom star has careered around Hollywoo (the ‘D’ fell off) on an endless stream of benders wrecking everything he comes across, so the biggest twist in season five is that he’s actually, sort of, making a go of it. He’s shooting a dark detective series, Philbert, which is a brilliant show-within-a-show that allows for all sorts of fun at the expense of pretentious prestige TV. Its writer Flip McVickers, voiced as a precious walking ego by Mr Robot’s Rami Malek, is a sendup of the Nick Pizzolatto-style auteur, although this gritty artistic vision will stream on whattimeisitnow.com, “a website for people who don’t know they have a clock in the corner of their screen”. The attention to detail is so great you could spend a serious amount of time lost in the notes stuck to the wall in Flip’s office, from “every season is a dream?? or drug trip” to, simply, “Nietzsche”.
Philbert is a witty satire of moody crime shows so completely thought through that I would almost certainly watch a whole season of it. It is also a jumping-off point for storylines about the state of the entertainment industry. No wait, come back! In an episode called BoJack the Feminist, BoJack accidentally objects to the hiring of a scandal-hit star, played by Bobby Cannavale, whose many public sins are a hilariously overcooked composite of the indiscretions of Alec Baldwin, Mel Gibson, Louis CK and more. BoJack becomes a feminist icon and has a lightbulb-moment realisation that the problem with feminism is that “it wasn’t men doing it”. It is silly, but when Diane is hired to make Philbert “less sexist”, it dares to show that it is easy to pay lip service to equality while still calling for “nipple ice” on set.
Considering BoJack is on a near-constant downward spiral, as are most of his friends and acquaintances, the show wears its weight lightly. The freedom of animation gives the show room to be inventive, and it runs with every opportunity. One episode puts a spin on the coming-out story by turning it into a farce about how asexuality might seem to a family that includes a porn star and an erotic novelist; another turns BoJack into Bobo the Depressed Zebra, in order to protect his identity.
There is a gorgeous episode dedicated to Diane taking a trip to Hanoi, presented as a travel listicle, but which really deals with her considering her identity as a Vietnamese-American. The scene in which a US tourist attempts to explain to her who is actually American descends into a brilliant babble of confusion. Like many of the show’s best moments, it leaves you with the strange feeling of being utterly moved by a mixed-up cartoon in which animals and humans lead an unspoken co-existence, albeit one that’s usually connected by empty bottles and self-loathing.
The emotional punches keep coming. About halfway through, there’s an astonishing episode dedicated solely to BoJack giving a eulogy, and that’s it. It’s a rare series that can dedicate 30 minutes to a monologue and not test viewers’ patience. But BoJack Horseman is that kind of show. The writing is razor-sharp, the targets pointed and the humanity of it all is as messy as it is complete. This is a series in the form of its life.
