In I May Destroy You, Michaela Coel plays Arabella, a twentysomething Londoner with pink hair and a buzzing social life.
In I May Destroy You, we find a woman destabilised but not destroyed by what has happened to her, and a bold and powerful series that asks difficult questions about sex and consent.
I May Destroy You – which was written by Coel and is, she has said, based on real-life events – finds Arabella piecing together what happened through hazy flashbacks: a cab; a cash machine; a toilet cubicle; a man.
While these dramas have examined the patriarchal systems that protect sexual predators, I May Destroy You shifts the focus to the victim – although the word “victim” is perhaps unhelpful in this context, conjuring as it does a sense of powerlessness and two-dimensionality that doesn’t apply to Arabella.