Anxiety, absurdity and little else pervade the post-pandemic world of Stuart Laws’ mockumentary – so what’s it trying to say about life after Covid?
Twelve months into the Covid pandemic, the world has changed. But how, precisely? The so-called “new normal” is now a staple of standup sets, from Jen Brister on home schooling, Hal Cruttenden on entertainers retraining for unlikely jobs, or Aisling Bea on facemask etiquette. You want it from an absurdist angle? Here’s Tim Key with a whole suite of skewwhiff poems on the subject. You want the fightback? Here’s Russell Kane, rejecting the new normal outright, rallying hopes that the old one will soon return.
But I’d yet to see the new normal anatomised in mockumentary style – which is just what Stuart Laws’ online series Grave New World seemed to promise. A cod current affairs show taking a Panorama-ish purview of life emerging from Covid, it features Laws as anchorman and a host of comics in supporting roles. I watched its four episodes waiting for the series to show its satirical hand. What does it have to say about this new reality – or, alternatively, how this new reality is represented in the media? I left none the wiser. It’s not without its charms, but Grave New World stays oddly – unsatisfyingly – oblique.
