Netflix’s Mockumentary Show ‘Death to 2020’ Got Negative Reviews
Charlie Brooke’s Death to 2020 was supposed to be a mockumentary series in 2020, but it turned out as a horror.
Death to 2020 is a mockumentary 70 minutes show that features a series of fictional characters discussing the events of the United Kingdom and the United States, including the presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic. The show was released on 27 December 2020 on Netflix. It created much hype near its streaming dates but received a mostly negative critical response.
In the show, a few characters discussed the event of 2020 with a mixture of true satire and information. However, the most highlighted topic of the series is a coronavirus. The film covers Australia’s bushfire in 2019-20, the environmental speeches of Greeta Thunberg’s at the World Economic Forum, the 2020 presidential election of the United States, the 2020 Oscars, and the stepping down of Prince Harry and his wife Meghan from British royal family. The show covers the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests of the U.S., protestors removing the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol, U.K., and many more such events that the world has faced in 2020. At the end of the show, the characters jokingly predict the event of 2021.
Samuel L. Jackson played the role of a reporter for the New Yorkerly Times named Dash Bracket. Hugh Grant featured as a historian, Tennyson Foss. Lisa Kudrow appeared as Jeanetta Grace Susan, a non-official conservative spokesperson. As Dr. Maggie Gravel, Leslie Jones played the character of a behavioral psychologist. The director reprises his original job profile as director James in the show.
Critics called Netflix’s mockumentary as “disappointing” and compared the content with Brooker’s previous projects like Black Mirror and Screenwipe. The series got an average rating of 39 out of 100 on Metacritic based on four reviews. The critic of Telegraph, Chris Bennion, gave two stars out of five and remarked it as “huge disappointment, as the humor is as predictable as the targets of the jokes.” Ed Cumming of The Independent gave only one star to the show, saying that “waiting for the punchline that never arrives and Grant is not given a single decent line.” The critic of The Hollywood Reporter, Daniel Fienberg, summarised the show as the “generally hacky piece of recycled political satire and tired documentary parody.” Fienberg said that he found it “astonishing how lazy everything is.” He said that he watched it as worse than many American topical comedies. However, Fienberg appreciated that the show had discussed the George Floyd protest content with “outrage and anger.”
