Having watched "The 80s: The Decade that Made Us", I now turn to this and am STUNNED at the difference. Of course, I was younger and freer in the 80s, while by the 90s I was married and a parent and with heavy responsibilities, but surely the difference goes beyond that, and it's even more odd, as the threads are the same. Obviously, the 90s literally and figuratively continued where the 80s left off ... and yet it's just different.
The makers help to achieve this effect - if Michael J. Fox is the face of the 80s, while Roseanne Barr epitomises the 90s, well "Back to the Future" was the first film I ever went to in which the (British) audience applauded spontaneously at the end. It was Feelgood personified in every possible aspect. Roseanne never managed that!
I am fresh from episode 4, and - to be honest - it's DISGUSTING at times, but not in any obvious way, and - believe me - this from someone (myself) who is world-weary, not-so-squeamish, sexually tolerant, and very much prepared to believe there are bad things in our world.
But, guess what? This programme achieves the impossible by disgusting me.
For me the nadir of the episode comes with the OJ trial (as opposed to the later OJ lawsuit), which began with a car chase that raised the sales for the kind of vehicle OJ fled in by 25%. People lined the streets to watch that car go by, even though the guy was holding a gun and likely to provoke a dangerous situation at any moment. Taste, decency, delicacy, care, caution, intellect and common sense all began to absent themselves at that point. The later trial is remembered by the talking heads on the programme as (literally) "soap opera". So many people watched the verdict that GDP in America fell tangibly, The trial stopped being about OJ and two people who were murdered and became about Rodney King and other isses. Case justice hardly came into it. The (black) prosecution counsel - poor guy - clearly still beats himself up about the case to this day. I do not know if the right verdict was delivered, but either way the trial was an unfair, idiotic, lowest common denominator circus.
Maybe it IS a little the style of presentation, or maybe this really was the 90s - but a great many of the topics presented here achieve the same dustbin/sewer/trash/content-free level, in which we are reminded how mindless popularisation and wrong foucusing were able to leave a great many things (a great many aspects of life) utterly tainted.
The fact that I feel this way now might be taken to suggest that things must be better if the 90s looked so bad. Hard to credit that (not least in pandemic world), but either way the programme achieves something, since it is an alerting and eye-opening experience. But (unlike with the series about the 80s) it's also an unedifying and dismal one...
The makers help to achieve this effect - if Michael J. Fox is the face of the 80s, while Roseanne Barr epitomises the 90s, well "Back to the Future" was the first film I ever went to in which the (British) audience applauded spontaneously at the end. It was Feelgood personified in every possible aspect. Roseanne never managed that!
I am fresh from episode 4, and - to be honest - it's DISGUSTING at times, but not in any obvious way, and - believe me - this from someone (myself) who is world-weary, not-so-squeamish, sexually tolerant, and very much prepared to believe there are bad things in our world.
But, guess what? This programme achieves the impossible by disgusting me.
For me the nadir of the episode comes with the OJ trial (as opposed to the later OJ lawsuit), which began with a car chase that raised the sales for the kind of vehicle OJ fled in by 25%. People lined the streets to watch that car go by, even though the guy was holding a gun and likely to provoke a dangerous situation at any moment. Taste, decency, delicacy, care, caution, intellect and common sense all began to absent themselves at that point. The later trial is remembered by the talking heads on the programme as (literally) "soap opera". So many people watched the verdict that GDP in America fell tangibly, The trial stopped being about OJ and two people who were murdered and became about Rodney King and other isses. Case justice hardly came into it. The (black) prosecution counsel - poor guy - clearly still beats himself up about the case to this day. I do not know if the right verdict was delivered, but either way the trial was an unfair, idiotic, lowest common denominator circus.
Maybe it IS a little the style of presentation, or maybe this really was the 90s - but a great many of the topics presented here achieve the same dustbin/sewer/trash/content-free level, in which we are reminded how mindless popularisation and wrong foucusing were able to leave a great many things (a great many aspects of life) utterly tainted.
The fact that I feel this way now might be taken to suggest that things must be better if the 90s looked so bad. Hard to credit that (not least in pandemic world), but either way the programme achieves something, since it is an alerting and eye-opening experience. But (unlike with the series about the 80s) it's also an unedifying and dismal one...
