The Curse is highly uncomfortable viewing. I would go so far as to say it is almost uniquely unpleasant to sit through each of its 10 episodes, most of which hit the hour-long mark. To say that I enjoyed it, as an entertainment experience, would be a lie. It is horrible and excruciating. Yet it is also inventive, provocative, oddly mesmerising and quite unlike anything else you will see on television this year. It is almost guaranteed to be loved and loathed in equal measure.
I must be a TV masochist, because I love it. Created by Nathan for You and The Rehearsal’s Nathan Fielder, who is no stranger to awkwardness, and Uncut Gems’ co-director Benny Safdie, who is no stranger to stress, the awkward, stressful The Curse follows a married couple, Asher (Fielder) and Whitney Siegel (Emma Stone), as they attempt to launch their reality TV show, provisionally entitled Flipanthropy. The concept is a Queer Eye-type series in which they do “good deeds” for the largely uninterested people of the city of Española, New Mexico. These good deeds also happen to incorporate marketing for the Siegels’ ecohome business, which is built on a model of buying cheap properties and flipping them for great profit, boosted by their attempts to gentrify the area with whitewashed minimalist coffee shops, denim stores and a lot of pottery made by Indigenous and local artists.
