Arch and imaginative, the US film-maker’s show is compellingly moreish – and a real celebration of the eccentricities that make life worth living
Much to my initial disappointment, How to With John Wilson (BBC2) is not a guide to life by the Radio 4 presenter, though surely there is a market for that. It is an HBO series, arriving here two years after it first aired in the US, consisting of themed documentaries by the film-maker John Wilson, though at times it comes across more like an art project with surreal comedy undertones. Each week Wilson takes an idea or prompt and tells a story in voiceover, using an extraordinary collage of footage taken from the streets of New York City, and beyond, to illustrate his points, either literally or symbolically. It is extremely odd – I can’t think of another show like it – and oddly moreish.
The first episode, How to Make Small Talk, sets the tone, and in a way that is a shame because the second, How to Put Up Scaffolding, is much, much better and seems to have a clearer idea of what this project is going to be. But first, it has to find its feet. To investigate what small talk is, and why we do it, Wilson captures people on the streets of New York. He films pets, plants and the actor Kyle MacLachlan attempting, and failing, to swipe his MetroCard on the subway. He meets a professor of philosophy to ask a far-reaching question about the future of humanity, then poses the same question to a man attending a huge WrestleMania event. This man reveals that, in his spare time, he sets up fake internet profiles to trap child predators. Wilson follows him to Pennsylvania to watch him work.
