I May Destroy You's Black Britishness is as specific as it is universal

Vulture

"It speaks to the gift of the show itself, its ability to draw recognisable experiences without flattening or homogenising, without smoothening its hard edges and making it easier for the audience to swallow," says Bolu Babalola of Michaela Coel's portrayal of Black Britishness on her HBO/BBC series. "I May Destroy You is as specific as it is universal — Blackness and Britishness infused in its essence. To watch this show without understanding that it is Black and British is to willfully ignore the fact — and yet, it exists not to be seen. It exists to exist, just as we do. This harks to the themes of complications, contradictions, and tensions that helm the series: Its Black Britishness is not notable, and to understand that it is not notable, you must first recognise that it is present and important. You must recognise that it matters. Black Britishness need not be removed to relate to the show. I May Destroy You, as a piece of art, is not in the business of servicing those who ignore the needful. It is an intellectually and emotionally vigorous show that gloriously presents its world without explanation. It is a show that states that when one says rah, you don’t need to understand to understand, babes."

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• I May Destroy You might be the best TV show of the year: "At the center of I May Destroy You, which aired on the BBC in the UK (where it was primarily made) and airs on HBO in the US, is the very vagueness contained in its title," says Emily VanDerWerff. "Who’s going to destroy who? Each and every episode answers that question a little bit differently. And with nine episodes of its 12-episode first season having aired in the US, it’s safe to say this is one of the best shows of the year."
• Michaela Coel explains how much changed in her 191 drafts for I May Destroy You: "In many ways, a lot has changed," she says. "In other ways, it hasn’t changed a bit. At the origin of this show, I knew I would begin with sexual assault, and I had a version of the ending, which meant I understood the beginning and the end, but didn’t know how I would get there. I always knew where I was going, but there were hundreds of different ways to really get there. So it changed in loads of ways."