The drama I May Destroy You, written and directed by its star Michaela Coel, completed its triumphant run on BBC One on Tuesday. It stands out from the usual machine-tooled TV drama in all kinds of ways, but particularly in its sheer formal boldness. It is simply not interested in received wisdoms about narrative shaping – principles that, when lazily applied, can smooth and polish TV drama into well-made, anodyne homogeneity. I May Destroy You has very obviously not been through an endless editing process of notes from layer upon layer of television executives.
It is not that it hasn’t been meticulously worked on – the script went through 191 drafts, according to a recent profile of Coel – but it lacks the planed-down quality that characterises the committee-produced object. Instead the show dares to loop and snag time, darting forwards and backwards with no explanation. It makes what should be deeply inappropriate tonal turns, inserting odd moments of humour into apparently grave scenes. It introduces fully formed characters, without pausing to explain them. The absence of familiar tropes makes I May Destroy You uncomfortable to watch – but very much like life.
Form and content are inseparable, and the drama’s structural originality is echoed in its material, characters and storytelling. I May Destroy You unfurls amid a milieu of twenty- and thirtysomething black Londoners and declines to explain them; in fact, it absolutely insists on its own status as mainstream. That is an ethical as well as an artistic position. When she gave the annual MacTaggart lecture to the Edinburgh television festival in 2018, Coel spoke a great deal about how much of her life she’d felt a “misfit” – not a position she’d chosen, although it turned out to be where she found her allies.
“Misfit” and “mainstream” are relative, not absolute terms, and one person’s mainstream is for another the eddying, swirling edge. But it’s among these “misfits” that cultural gatekeepers are now restlessly searching for new voices, having identified the commercial and societal requirement for diversity. Coel showed in her poetic, beautifully written lecture how this – often well-intentioned – search for new voices can in fact exploit individuals and snuff out art. She turned down a $1m deal with Netflix to make I May Destroy You because she would have lacked the creative control that she demanded. It is to the BBC’s credit that when she pitched it the show, it accepted on the basis of respecting her autonomy.
There’s a long history at the BBC of letting writers get on and write, but it is a patchy one. The auteurs of the past, often “misfits” in their own way – figures such as Ken Loach, Andrea Dunbar and Dennis Potter – were exceptions to the rule. I May Destroy You demonstrates that great art is made when a creator is trusted and backed. It should be the rule, not the exception.
