Maybe because I May Destroy You is as much about the creative process - or, specifically, about writer’s block - as it is about assault and its many other weighty subjects.Īrabella is in Italy in the first episode allegedly to complete work on the first draft of her new book, but really she’s just there to hang out with her drug dealer boyfriend Biagio (Marouane Zotti). But also, the deeper in I got, the more obvious it became that Coel’s much less interested in clarifying exactly what’s happening than she is in showing you how these confounding events make Arabella feel.Īs any good writer - and Coel (who wrote every episode and co-directed most of them with Sam Miller) is one hell of a writer - knows, where you choose to begin your story can say a lot about what kind of story you’re telling. So while a colleague reviewed the show prior to premiere, I waited until the season was close to done so I could watch it on HBO with the captions on, and everything was almost instantly clearer.
Eventually, I decided that the show’s extreme Britishness was too much of a barrier for me without subtitles. (*) I watched screeners of the first four episodes months ago, simultaneously aware that Coel was doing something really compelling and that I was having one hell of a time following much of what was happening.
