Critic Reviews

The direction is lucid, employing a camera that is both curious and kind. The writing is striking for its willingness to delve into uncomfortable territory without ever flinching from the emotional bramble at hand. But what I keep coming back to when I think of I May Destroy You is Coel’s performance. ... It is through Coel’s tremendous performance that the wrenching complications of healing from sexual trauma are seen clearly in the light of day, with an honesty and complexity other series could learn from.

“I May Destroy You” is moving and, despite the subject matter, at times very funny. It should inspire plenty of conversation about very sensitive subject matter with ever-increasing complexities. It marks bold new territory for Coel, who’s operating at a level unmatched among her peers.

The show’s greatest triumph is how thoroughly and intuitively it expresses the difficult themes at its center. Sometimes it’s sad; sometimes it’s gut-wrenching; sometimes it’s improbably funny. What remains consistent is that through it all, it’s impossible to look away.

"I May Destroy You" is the artist ascending to the next level by mixing comedy and pain together in a strange, harrowing, and vitalizing soup. ... Coel's writing and the command of filmic artistry somehow prevails over the what reads as a such corrosive sadness. It's a testament to her skill that "I May Destroy You" manages to be funny and tender in all the right places, fearlessly cuffing viewers to discomfort, be it her character's and her own, in others.

No TV show has ever shown the complexities of sexual assault and how it affects survivors, their friends and their communities quite like this difficult, harrowing and hilarious drama.

It is, in short, an extraordinary, breathtaking achievement without a false note in it, shot through with humour and with ideas, talent and character to burn at every perfectly plotted turn.

In an instant, a show that at first seems to blend the best elements of “Fleabag,” “Euphoria” and “Insecure” takes a serious swerve in an emotionally startling direction. ... Nearly every moment here is worth unpacking. ... At its considerable heart, “I May Destroy You” tells a striking story of transformation.

At once hyper-local and global in its concerns, I May Destroy You feels eminently contemporary, a necessary artistic distillation of a distinctly modern form of life.

The beauty of her work will captivate you; her portrait of the devastation wrought by sexual assault’s fallout may destroy you.

I May Destroy You stays on the right side of the line between providing context and shifting blame by telling an uncommonly holistic story. ... This degree of complexity would’ve been enough to distinguish the show from hundreds of earlier representations of sexual misconduct. Remarkably, though, it grows even more ambitious as it continues, without alienating viewers by deploying academic buzzwords or condescending lectures. ... More than the story of a woman who was raped, Coel is telling the story of how a writer living an unexamined life comes to know herself.