I May Destroy You should be up for an award but perhaps this year’s perplexing nominations reflect our troubled times
Every time I react passionately to the nominations for any awards ceremony, I have to recognise that I am playing along with the game. I can talk about the Oscars or the Emmys or the Baftas as some sort of monolith, able to point a single benevolent finger at the chosen ones, but they are essentially surveys of big groups of people with different interests and tastes (it may be, though, that it is their similarities that are the problem). Sometimes, they highlight the very best of any given year and are a useful guide to what to watch; more often, they offer a hodgepodge of picks based on politics and fashion. A quick look at the best picture winner at the Oscars, for example, shows that often the winner has not been the film that stood the test of time.Crash beat Brokeback Mountain. Dances with Wolves beat Goodfellas. Forrest Gump beat The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction.
However, the Golden Globes have lost it completely by managing to not nominate I May Destroy You for anything at all. Michaela Coel’s brilliant television series, about sex, assault, relationships, identity and so much more, is a masterpiece and that is not hyperbole. To omit it from one category would have been careless and a little weird. To omit it entirely seems pointed and that is shameful. Coel has made a series that will stand the test of time and she deserves to be recognised for it.
