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It unfolds like this: On a weekend evening, I peruse what’s in the PVR or On-Demand and there are accumulated episodes of shows I don’t particularly savour at that moment. Too much torture, too much pain, a great deal of cynicism and more torture.

The second season of The Handmaid’s Tale (Sundays, Bravo) has been particularly hard to watch. The central charcter, Offred/June (Elisabeth Moss) has been put through every possible form of torture, from emotional to physical. (There are some spoilers here if you haven’t seen anything of Season 2.) First she fled, hid in what turned out to be a killing centre, and on trying to reach Canada was pulled from a plane by the ankles at the last minute.

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In the Handmaid’s Tale, Offred/June, played by Elisabeth Moss, reckons with the consequences of a dangerous decision while haunted by memories from her past and the violent beginnings of Gilead.

Then, once captured, she is chained up in a basement, pregnant and angry. The increasingly malicious Lydia (Ann Dowd) tells her, “June will be chained in this room until she gives birth. And then June will be executed.” When Offred/June is left alone with Serena (Yvonne Strahovski), the wife of Offred/June’s master, she grabs Offred/June by the throat and threatens her. Next comes a shockingly humiliating bath. And eventually Lydia shows Offred/June the body of the man who tried to help her escape. It’s hanging on a wall.

The level of physical and emotional violence inflicted on women is stunning.

The new and rather good British drama Deep State on Super Channel (available on Super Channel On-Demand) is about what its title says: There’s a “deep state” of officials who are undermining both policy and military actions for their own personal gain and bias. A former spy, Max (Mark Strong), is drawn back into operations to help what he thinks is a crisis.

Everything goes awry in Middle East locations. But what’s striking is not so much the cinematic feel and the twisted politics, but the torture. Screwdrivers and pliers are used for purposes that are gut-wrenching.

Add in other series that sit in my PVR or On-Demand and there’s more. On Westworld, the overriding theme is that the humans are instinctively debauched, wanton, cruel creatures. Only artificial intelligence has a soul.

We live in polarized times. It’s the anti-truth era. It’s the time of trial by social media; of rising right and far-right populism. A time of fierce anger unleashed. It is also an age that seems to prize images of torture and scenes of pain inflicted.

There is a proliferation of torture in the genre of smart, thoughtful television. None of the series I have cited are stupid and ill-thought. But they are manipulative in normalizing hatred, torture and physical agony. There is some historical significance to this, but I’m not sure what it is. Certainly, there is a furious intensity to it all, and in these polarized times the emphasis on pain seems like another example of sides talking past each other.

Sometimes, especially on those weekend nights when all that’s been stored for pleasure is a bunch of narratives featuring pain, it feels like a culture degraded. It is absolutely necessary for the best of TV storytelling to dwell on the awfulness of humanity and, in the case of The Handmaid’s Tale – now that it is unleashed beyond Margaret Atwood’s novel – necessary to be emphatically admonitory about totalitarianism.

Yet, as alert and awake to tyranny and despotism as one wants to be, there also has to be a fatigue with cynicism, with the camera’s voyeuristic dwelling on pain and torture. Little wonder I wish for more episodes of FX’s Pose and Showtime’s Patrick Melrose. Both are about overcoming obstacles, without sugar-coating the struggles. I’m not naive, I’m just suffering pain fatigue.

Thank heavens the World Cup starts soon and it will be a while before the torture of penalty-kick decisions is inflicted. Even then it will only amount to some goalkeeper looking mortified.


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