With the launch of YouTube’s latest original series Weird City, the world-conquering video portal seems keen to hold up a polished onyx reflector to our tech-traumatised times, albeit one with a goofy funhouse spin. Created by the Oscar-winning writer/director of Get Out, Jordan Peele, and Charlie Sanders, who previously wrote for the Emmy-winning Key and Peele sketch show, Weird City is a lively but slightly slapdash collection of half-hour vignettes all set in the same near-future metropolis, one divided by a strict security border called the Line. Those living above the Line (presumably on Allegorical Avenue) are the Haves: affluent, status-conscious poseurs pampered by daft sci-fi luxuries. Those subsisting below the Line are the Have Nots, who mostly just seem like normal decent folk rather than the usual Mad Max-style feral scavengers.
The opening episode eases viewers into Weird City’s sci-fi spoofery by skewering dating apps. Dylan O’Brien, the handsome young lead of the Maze Runner movie franchise, is a nouveau riche Have Not struggling to navigate love in the Have zone. After signing up for a bleeding-edge dating service, the scientifically determined love of his life is supposed to arrive at his apartment at midnight (“For dramatic effect,” confides the smug salesperson). When O’Brien opens his door and sees shlubby Modern Family star Ed O’Neill, the stage is set for a surprisingly sweet tale of human connection pitted against state-orchestrated social control.
Episode two stars Michael Cera as a potbellied Have whose struggles to find his place within Weird City’s rigid caste systems might be sympathetic if he wasn’t such a heroically exasperating loser (even his automated personal assistant breaks up with him). Rosario Dawson’s calculating fitness guru initially sees Cera’s sadsack as an easy source of income, but their mentor-student relationship rapidly turns into an extreme battle of wills that spins off into some surprisingly gruesome tangents.
Those first two episodes are free for anyone to watch, but to check out the rest of Weird City requires crossing another Line between Haves and Have Nots in the form of coughing up a monthly stipend for YouTube Premium. So what’s behind the paywall? The remaining four episodes also feature plenty of starry names, including the Walking Dead’s Steven Yeun and Community’s Gillian Jacobs as half of an unbearable hipster quartet of Haves who decide the best way to make Weird City a more equitable place is by adopting a Have Not child, whether he likes it or not. There is also a fun fish-out-of-water instalment starring Moana’s Auliʻi Cravalho as an academically gifted Have Not pursuing a scholarship at a Have college. Beneath its blandly upbeat exterior – traditionally cruel hazing rituals are now aggressive exercises in building self-confidence – the institutions hides a dark and squirmy conspiracy.
The standout episode features a boho Have couple (Roseanne’s Sara Gilbert and Orange is the New Black’s Laverne Cox) moving into a luxurious smart house controlled by an artistic AI (voiced with typically diabolical verve by Mark Hamill) only to discover that mild dissent over interior decoration can escalate into something much more operatic, especially when the walls have ears. The finale – also the shortest episode, at just 18 minutes – is a big postmodern blowout, with Crazy Rich Asians’ Awkwafina and Community’s Yvette Nicole Brown playing characters in a TV show slowly becoming self-aware and demolishing the fourth wall. It’s so much fun that it’s only when the dust has settled that your realise it has barely any connection to the overarching Weird City setting.
If Black Mirror – a clear inspiration and satirical target – mostly leaves viewers feeling bad, Weird City has a much wackier energy, in keeping with its cheap-and-cheerful, slightly garish visual style. It also features a fine collection of absurd, semi-futuristic names such as Blarnaby, Jathryn and Nurmph (co-creator Sanders cameos as a dim cop called “Girth Haddock”). There is also some entertaining nose-thumbing at HBO, as Haves are mandated to plug in to a Prestige TV module that immerses them in a crude but entertaining mash-up of The Wire and Game of Thrones.
Yet, even at a sprightly average of 25 minutes, most Weird City episodes feel like sketch ideas that have been stretched out a little too far. These are the sort of cheerfully macabre future-shock satires that 2000AD magazine routinely cranks out in four pages. If it wasn’t for the consistently winning cast bringing so much energy and enthusiasm, Weird City would feel like much more of a drag. It’s certainly a coup for YouTube to be in business with the lauded creator of Get Out. But the industrious Peele is also rebooting The Twilight Zone this year – a much more venerable anthology brand, presumably funded with less of a Have Not budget – so Weird City may end up feeling like little more than a warm-up.
Weird City is available on YouTube Premium now
