Streaming on: Netflix
Episodes viewed: 10 of 10
Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) isn't the only one who likes to change his identity. You shifts each season too, transforming with a new city and cast each time. But whether he's surrounded by LA hipsters or suburban Momfluencers, Joe's own refusal to change makes each season less exciting than the last. How many times can Goldberg get away with murder before viewers grow tired of his endless luck and privilege?
Thankfully, the writers are more self-aware than Joe is, which is why Season 4 represents a reinvention for the show beyond its new Notting Hill-style window dressing. Satirical barbs at London snobbery abound — one character is genuinely called Lady Phoebe Borehall-Blaxworth — but this time, we don't have to listen to Joe's creepy adoration all season long. Instead, Season 4 turns the show into a whodunnit, which means Joe is now more concerned with the killer who's butchering his friends than having a butcher's at vulnerable women.
It's still preposterous, and all kinds of schlocky, which is just the way its fans like it.
This new spin on You's formula also makes it easier for us to reconcile the show's love of Joe with his disturbing behaviour. The disgust he feels towards the 'Eat the Rich Killer' shines a much-needed light on his own delusions. That's not to say the show has become a serious one, though. It's still preposterous, and all kinds of schlocky, which is just the way its fans like it.
The new cast members who fare best are the ones who lean fully into the absurdities of this world, including The White Lotus‘ Lukas Gage and Tilly Keeper's aforementioned Lady Phoebe. Charlotte Ritchie is a standout too, but this is still all about Badgley, and here he gives his best performance yet as Joe. Who else could get away with lines like "I’m in the West End revival of Mean Girls"?
By the end of Part One, you'll be obsessing over what's to come in Part Two, which shifts all over again, and provides twists even more brilliantly silly than the first.
