We tend to churn through stories at high speed these days, even when the subject matter might deserve more deliberate and sustained consideration. The #MeToo movement feels like a prime example of this. After the outpouring of high-profile denunciations had died down, the deeper structural questions about prejudice and power quickly ceased to make headlines.
Thankfully, however, we are still seeing wave after wave of explicitly post-#MeToo storylines showing up on our screens, reminding us that it still matters. Television series in particular can offer a sense of catharsis to viewers who may have been affected by the trauma of sexual harassment or violence in real life, as the characters work through issues on screen in shows that run over the space of months or years. In the words of the New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum, television has always been “a delivery system for morality”. What we see on our screens reflects back on us, and vice versa.
So far, attempts to parse the #MeToo movement on screen have fallen into one of two broad categories. There are those films and shows that fictionalise real-life events, such as the 2019 film The Assistant, a take on the Harvey Weinstein case, or the Nicole Kidman vehicle Bombshell, which portrays the downfall of Fox News CEO Roger Ailes. Then there are those that come at the subject matter from a more oblique angle, putting original characters in fictional situations that speak to the unequal power dynamics in many different workplaces.
One of the more successful of the latter category is the animated Netflix series Tuca and Bertie, set in a surreal bakery ruled over by a haughty, power-mad chef. Bertie, a pastry apprentice, endures her boss’s bizarre abuse – at one point he shoves her face into a hot pot of roux – because she believes that’s how a genius chef has to behave. It's only when another apprentice angrily calls the chef out on his behaviour that Bertie begins to realise that she has been conditioned her whole life to conflate toxic behaviour and authority. It’s a rough and recognisable revelation.
It’s notable that these shows and films appeared in 2019, about 18 months after the exposure of Harvey Weinstein’s crimes – a reasonable amount of time for a production to take place. But shows and films with these themes continue to attract big budgets and major stars, as well as considerable audience shares. It’s almost as if, having finally opened the box containing Hollywood’s worst kept secrets, writers and producers just can’t stop rifling through it.
One of the splashiest attempts to grapple with these themes in the last few months was Anatomy of a Scandal, a Netflix political thriller starring Sienna Miller as the wife of a Tory MP who is accused of rape by one of his aides and subsequently stands trial. Sadly, the show doesn’t live up to its premise: the writing is stale and the raunchy flashbacks undermine any sense of authority on the subject. And even today’s politicians don’t talk like the show's characters, who are fond of earnest truisms like “politics could always use more poetry” or “hearts are much smarter than heads”.
By contrast, Apple TV’s The Morning Show had a very promising first series, about a popular television host whose onscreen presenting partner is fired after a sexual harassment allegation. The writers cannily put the spotlight on Jennifer Aniston’s character as the embattled presenter left behind, rather than on Steve Carell as the man dealing with the consequences of his actions. Her relationship with her new, younger, idealistic co-host, played by Reese Witherspoon, is fascinating and nuanced. Initially positioned as onscreen rivals, they eventually become unlikely allies as the extent of the cover-up is revealed.
However, when the show returned in late 2021 for a second series, the focus had been diluted. Instead of tracking the continued ramifications of this scandal, The Morning Show took the risky decision to attempt to weave a realistic portrayal of the Covid-19 pandemic in as a theme, and it was far less compelling as a result.
Chivalry, a post-#MeToo Channel Four drama written by and starring Steve Coogan and Sarah Solemani, blends fact and fiction in a way that sounded very intriguing on paper. They make a somewhat unlikely pair. Coogan is better known for his decades portraying Alan Partridge, while Solemani is most recognisable for her work on the quirky sitcom Him & Her and her political activism on subjects like sex workers’ rights and antisemitism. They worked together on the 2019 film Greed and reportedly put much of their real-life dynamic into the characters of Cameron, a sort of Hollywood-based Alan Partridge, and Bobby, a feminist filmmaker hired to fix his latest production.
As a veteran showbusiness operator, Cameron’s hypocrisy sits at the heart of the show, as he simultaneously tries to prove how "woke" he is now, while also absolutely refusing to let go of the old ways that still, to an extent, benefit him. It is incredibly funny at times – the scene where the pair thrash out how to reshoot a sex scene so that it isn’t tailored for the male gaze is a particular highlight – but it still feels more like a Partridge-in-LA offshoot than a fresh take on gender politics and power, and at times the characters’ choices seem inconsistent with their personalities.
The show that, for me, dealt most frankly and funnily with the #MeToo theme was not one that made it central to the plot. It does come in another odd-couple series, though: HBO Max's Hacks, a rapid-fire comedy about a veteran stand-up comic, Deborah Vance, who is closing in on her 2,500th show in Las Vegas and fighting off accusations that she is no longer relevant. Vance hires a disaffected, semi-cancelled young writer from LA to help her punch up her act, and their intergenerational personality clash forms the spine of the series.
It is easy to imagine what the show might have looked like before #MeToo. Pre-2017, Jean Smart’s glorious role of Deborah might have gone to a man: it would have been a vehicle for someone like Steve Martin, perhaps, hamming it up to eleven. In that parallel universe, Smart – a multi-award-winning actor now in her seventies, with a career spanning decades – might never have got the role. She might, instead, have continued her run of playing roles thought suitable to "older" female actors: the mother of the protagonist in gritty crime dramas like Mare of Easttown.
If that were the case, we would never have seen the magisterial scene where Deborah halts her set in a small comedy club mid-joke so she can offer a douchebag male comedian she has seen hitting on another woman in the green room $1.69m to leave the industry for ever. “I can still do my podcast?” he pleads, eyes wet, all bravado evaporated as she holds out her hand on stage to shake on the deal. “No. And if you break the rules, you pay me back, double,” she fires back. Smart leaves a long pause after delivering that line, and the camera zooms in as she blinks and waits, absolutely confident that she holds all the cards.
That’s the post-#MeToo catharsis that I want to see. Not the endless recycling of grim incident and tedious fallout, but some indication that the balance of power has shifted – not only in the fictional stories, but also in the way that these stories are being told.
This piece is from the New Humanist autumn 2022 edition. Subscribe here.
