COBRA KAI: SEASONS 1 & 2

OUT NOW / CERT 15 / 600 MINS

During the first season of Cobra Kai, bad boy fiftysomething sensei Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) aggressively advises one of his meek, nerdy students to “flip the script” and rewrite himself from victim to badass. There’s no better way to encapsulate what this not-so-guilty pleasure of a show does with ’80s fave The Karate Kid, as it tongue-inc-heekily riffs on the idea that maybe blond bully Lawrence was the real hero of that movie, and Daniel-san (Ralph Macchio) the villain. Thankfully, it’s not so cut-and-dried as that, but Cobra Kai has a lot of fun messing around with both our nostalgia and expectations.

It is somehow simultaneously a tribute to and a pastiche of the Karate Kid movies, bringing back original cast members (including Macchio and Martin Kove), while wittily bequeathing their analogue dramas to a new, digital-native generation.