You talkin' to me?: how TV narration got personal
The TV voiceover is a trope that is as old as TV itself. It has been a staple of mystery shows, comedies and even heavyweight dramas. Whether voiceover or to-camera narration, it has helped viewers navigate tricksy plots, or simply revealed a character’s internal state to the audience. Dexter, for instance, would not have worked without the voiceover giving us access to his “dark passenger”, and we would have struggled to stay abreast of the numerous threads, character connections and comical callbacks in Arrested Development without its dryly critical narrator.
But all of this has changed in recent years. Characters are no longer narrating to an imagined “other”, with audience members simply eavesdropping. Instead, the audience is becoming a vital part of the show, and perhaps even a character within it. Mr Robot has let its protagonist, Elliot (Rami Malek), talk to us in voiceover since episode one. “Hello, friend,” his soporific voice greets us, lulling us into a false sense of security that this is a garden-variety TV voiceover. But – as the show has gone on – Elliot has called on us more and more, asking us to help him search a room for clues, or berating us for withholding information from him. He has also lied to us – including not telling us that he was in prison for most of season two.
In the fourth and final season, currently airing, Elliot has stopped speaking to us. We appear to have fallen out, for reasons that are not yet clear. His alter-ego, Mr Robot (Christian Slater), is speaking to us instead, asking for our help with Elliot. The show has also revealed that Mr Robot isn’t Elliot’s only alternate personality – there is a third one, too. In addition, memories of his mother and himself as a boy also live in Elliot’s mind. “Maybe I should give you a name,” Elliot told us back in episode one. “But that’s a slippery slope; you’re only in my head.” Now, in season four, we are literally in his head, spying on what is going on in there, with fans speculating that his third personality could actually be us – the imaginary friend he has been speaking to from the very beginning. It is all a far cry from the sardonic narration of Malcolm in the Middle, or JD’s voiceover and fantasy sequences in Scrubs. Rather than narration being used to tie each episode into a neat bow at the end, it is there to complicate matters.
Mr Robot is not the only show that uses narration to draw the audience in. We have seen Frank Underwood’s sinister narration in House of Cards turn us into something like an of an
accessory to his many crimes, before Kevin Spacey’s own alleged crimes precipitated his departure from the show. Underwood’s narration even bled into the real world when Spacey uploaded a bizarre in-character video, in which he seemed to comment on his own misdeeds. “You trusted me, even though you knew you shouldn’t,” he said, seemingly implying that viewers were complicit in Frank’s – and his own – behaviour.
Fleabag took things a step further, with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s to-camera narration turning us into her confidante. In an interview with Tina Fey earlier this year, Waller-Bridge said she wanted the audience to feel as if Fleabag had invited them to be her friend, only for the character to become scared when her new “friends” start to get too close. “[The camera] begins to hang around longer than she wants it to hang around,” Waller-Bridge explains. “It’s like when someone asks you to hang out with them and it’s really intense really quickly and they’re like: ‘We’re best friends!’ Then you’re starting to ask a bit too personal questions and they’re like: ‘Actually, I’m not ready for this relationship.’”
But where Fleabag really tore down the wall between show and audience was in the scene where Andrew Scott’s priest followed Fleabag’s gaze and – briefly, thrillingly – locked eyes with us. Viewers the world over screamed in surprise and delight as he asked: “What was that?” It was about as close to a jump-scare as a comedy-drama can get, but was also the moment that the viewers were really dragged into the show. We were a real character (albeit projected) that Fleabag had been speaking to, and the priest was the first person to pay attention to her enough to notice. When she waved us a sad but optimistic goodbye in the final episode, our co-dependent friendship had finally reached a healthy end.
But just why are these narrators appealing to their audiences? Arguably this device has its roots in our ever-connected social media age; from theorising over mysteries such as Sherlock’s “death” and delving into Game Of Thrones’ various prophesies, we are more involved in our favourite TV than ever before. It makes sense that those very shows would, in turn, seek to draw us in even closer, turning viewers into characters and plot points, and placing them at the centre of big twists (see also Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, in which the the audience was more than just a character within the show – we were the villain, a malignant force driving the protagonist steadily insane). As VR becomes a more viable platform, and interactive television like Bandersnatch becomes increasingly achievable, it is likely that we will only be drawn further and further into the stories we love. Despite growing TV audiences, things have never felt so personal.
The final season of Mr Robot airs on Amazon Prime in the UK and USA Network in the US