The Vince Staples Show: a weird, woozy new TV genre is on the rise – and Atlanta fans will love it
All right, let’s get it out of the way: Netflix has a new show with rapper and actor Vince Staples, called The Vince Staples Show (from Thursday 15 February), and there is no way we are getting through this without referencing the fact that it shares some genetic material with rapper and actor-created shows Atlanta (which I loved) and Dave, which I loved right up until the last three minutes of the season three finale (come to think of it, I also hated the entire fifth episode of season three) – the entire Brad Pitt section! Come on!
This isn’t just because all three shows have an actor-rapper in them, by the way. As with Dave, Staples plays a version of himself inflected by fame: people come up to him and recognise him, certain doors are opened and wheels are greased as a result of who he is, he is randomly adored or hated by passersby, and that’s a really interesting and fun texture for a show to have. And, much like Atlanta, there’s a woozy, anything-could-happen quality to what’s going on (an episode set in an off-brand theme park is so Atlanta I did wonder whether they found a rejected script in a big bin behind the studios at FX). Right, I’m glad we cleared that up.
This is a good thing, though. A small part of me does rankle against the fact that, for some reason, the only TV writers allowed to create ambitious, meta, surreal TV shows with gorgeous direction have to prove themselves as bestselling music artists first. (If an ordinary “writer” wrote the first episode of The Vince Staples Show, it would be mushed through a mill of producers who insist on “story beats” and “perhaps an extra character” and “I want to know more about the girlfriend”: Vince Staples can just say “but I’m Vince Staples” and shut those conversations down.) The point is, these ambitious shows are actually being made, and they’re being made in such a number and to such a high quality that they are becoming a genre of their own. Sure, for now, Vince Staples is one of the few people on Earth afforded the freedom to make something as lush and weird and meandering as The Vince Staples Show. But the template exists now, and one day someone will be able to make a show like this without having to spend a couple of years in Odd Future first.
In the show, Staples plays a deadpan version of himself in a semi-surrealised version of Long Beach, California. (It is simply called the Beach; each episode opens with the words: “This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to actual events are purely coincidental.” I personally quite like that rappers have reclaimed “being a bit pretentious”.) He is deliberately flat and normal while