Schlock to Remember

If you can’t wait to relive last year, Netflix has a special for you.

TV / KATHRYN VANARENDONK

DO YOU REMEMBER when Parasite won those Oscars, and the whole world went into lockdown, and George Floyd was killed? Do you remember the presidential election, and what it felt like to spend a lot of time on Zoom, and the most recent season of The Crown? Great! You are all caught up and have no need to watch Netflix’s end-of-the-year comedy special, Death to 2020. If the special, which was produced by Black Mirror creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, had taken greater advantage of its many celebrity participants or added a new perspective to its observational humor—or even just pushed its juvenility a little further—it might have been more appealing. As it is, though, Death to 2020 is a limp, unimaginative recap of a year surely few viewers will need help remembering.

DEATH TO 2020 NETFLIX.

The special is filmed in mockumentary format, intercutting a series of talking-head expert characters with real footage from the year and voice-over from an authoritative narrator (Laurence Fishburne). The first clue to Death to 2020’s sense of humor is the names it gives to its characters. Samuel L. Jackson plays Dash Bracket, a journalist for a publication called the New Yorkerly News. Kumail Nanjiani is an ethics-free tech CEO named Bark Multiverse. Joe Keery, whose character is identified onscreen as “Gig Economy Millennial,” gets the name Duke Goolies. A scientist played by Samson Kayo is stuck with the name Pyrex Flask.