The anthology series Roar (Apple TV+), from the makers of GLOW, promises eight standalone stories about “what it means to be a woman today”. Considering that these stories involve sex with a duck, teeth emerging from bloody wounds and teenage “incels” in basements, what it means to be a woman today is certainly unsettling. This is an adaptation of a collection of short stories by Cecelia Ahern, and its weird streak is enjoyable. It helps that it comes with ample star power: Nicole Kidman, Issa Rae and Cynthia Erivo star, among many others.
The title of each episode is also the sum of its plot, and sometimes this is exposing. The Woman Who Ate Photographs has Kidman attempting to care for her mother – who has dementia – and beginning to eat photographs, causing a powerful visual and physical nostalgia, as if she were back in the moment she has just consumed. The Woman Who Found Bite Marks on her Skin has Erivo playing an executive and mother who develops bloody wounds when the pull of family life starts to intrude upon her work – or perhaps it’s the other way around. In The Woman Who Disappeared, Rae is a memoirist being courted by Hollywood after her book is a smash hit, but who begins literally to disappear when trying to stand her ground in a meeting led by three identikit corporate white men. The Woman Who Was Fed by a Duck, meanwhile, has Merritt Wever as a woman in her 30s who is tired of being single and is seduced by a suitor who doesn’t seem to be “defective”, unlike many of the men she meets. Not only is the suitor a duck, he’s a duck who pretends to be a feminist, but who also has a nasty streak. There are some scenes in this episode that are indelible in the mind.
