I saw Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You in 2018 and have been trying to figure out whether I liked it or not ever since. After half a decade I am erring on the side of “yes”, though it’s definitely one of those films you don’t want to be the first person to say something about as you leave the cinema (“That was definitely a – yeah. Uh, well, yeah, it was a film”). A wonderful cast, a startlingly inventive seed of an idea that sprawls into something huge, horses … There was a lot going on.
And now here’s another thing by him. We’ll start with what it’s about, and then we’ll hem and haw about whether it’s good or not: I’m a Virgo is a new Prime Video series (from Friday 23 June) where Moonlight’s Jharrel Jerome plays a 13ft-tall teenager, Cootie, who has lived a sheltered life behind high walls and hedges and fences with his strange and protective adoptive parents. Then he busts out – wouldn’t be much of a story if he didn’t, would it? – and gets up to all sorts of coming-of-age-style shenanigans, only obviously he is banging his head on way more things. Jerome is wonderful: he plays the role so sweetly – huge and bashful and vulnerable but powerful – and there’s a lot more going on than camera trickery, prop work and “He’s tall, look!”.
There’s an inverted superhero story, anti-Marvel almost – here is a person with freakish and phenomenal powers, look at them try their hardest to live a normal life! – and obviously, it being Riley, there’s a consistent aesthetic vision, weird but never veering into too weird, that ties the whole thing together. Walton Goggins is in it, which is always a good sign. Every actor has fully bought into the project. There is a lot to really like. Do I know what’s happening? No, not really. But sometimes that’s not the point.
From the very first shot (Carmen Ejogo holding a huge, freakish, gore-covered baby), I’m a Virgo is knowingly, jarringly strange, and your mileage with that is going to vary. Personally, I found the first episode a little clunky – weird things are happening, we get it! Does everything need to be a visual trick? – but by the back-end, everything started to click and whirr. Necessarily, a show about a 13ft-tall shy teenager having a weirdly anime fight outside a nightclub with five normal-sized men is going to include some big visual and storyline swings, and some of those aren’t going to connect. But, but but but: I am just really glad someone is swinging.
Much like Sorry to Bother You, the initial “This’d be weird, wouldn’t it?” idea scratches off and starts to spool out in strange and unpredictable ways, and that’s where I’m a Virgo finds its feet. Once the magical world has really bedded in, you can play around with, say, a flying order-and-justice hero who might not be all that he seems, or the possibilities of a giant boy in the NBA, or a power agent turning up with a card that reads “SPORT. TALENT. ACAI PRODUCTS”. Some clanks remain – heavy-handed attempts to reach for the profound can make it sound like one of those videos they used to show in PSHE to try to teach teenagers about the dangers of peer pressure – but, again, big swings lead to big misses.
I’ve been watching Jon Benjamin Has a Van recently, a cult Comedy Central series from 2011 led by H Jon Benjamin, the voice of Bob from Bob’s Burgers and Sterling Archer from Archer, and it’s so weird and of-a-time. It’s almost great – nine brilliant episodes, one absolute howler, and one recurring sketch character so bad I have to fast-forward through it – but it’s made me realise, very acutely, that we are living through a dearth of seeing and trying right now. Every sketch concept makes me say – out loud, to my laptop – “You couldn’t make this today!” I think TV at the moment is missing a certain element inherent to Jon Benjamin Has a Van: “What if we gave the strangest guy we know eight months and a bit of budget to make whatever he wants?” I’m a Virgo goes some way to answering that: highly polished, big production, still weird-but-in-a-way-The-Algorithm-would-like, but completely visionary. Again, I don’t really know what’s happening. But it’s nice to be challenged by something huge and gloopy and strange, and not be assured of a neat, clean ending.
