“Creamerie” is a dark comedy originally produced for the New Zealand market that started streaming in the United States on Hulu late in December.
The show’s premise is that in the near future, there is a plague that wipes out nearly all the men in the world and the 1% of men who survived were sent to be isolated in New Zealand. The show is set seven years after the plague, and we see how women have picked up the pieces and reinvented society.
The show centers on three women who live and work on an organic dairy farm in the fictional New Zealand location of the Hiro Valley and their discovery of the first man they have seen in the better part of a decade.
With the main characters being Jamie played by J.J. Fong (“Friday Night Bites”), her sister-in-law Alex played by Ally Xue (“Cowboy Bebop 2021”), their friend Pip played by Perlina Lau (“Unboxed”) and the man the group of women unwittingly find named Bobby played by Jay Ryan (“It Chapter Two”).
The imagery of the show is incredibly ham-fisted with the opening montage of the men dying from the plague eventually transitioning into a group of women and young girls singing Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” in a church with a crude approximation of a woman’s vagina hanging from the wall in the place of a cross.
This society has problems with the interaction of its members, manifested in the first episode when Xue’s character Alex commits an act of civil disobedience and vandalism.
The women in power use a powerful drug on Alex called bliss inserted into the base of her neck resulting in her feeling contentment, but also no longer being able to care for herself or form dissenting thoughts.
The show later describes what happens to those who take the path of long-term dissension, the viewer is shown cutaways to Jamie’s mother sitting alone in a hospital bed not responding to her family as they attempt to interact with her. We learn the mother’s condition is due to being lobotomized for sharing her belief that some men could have survived the plague.
This show raised many moral issues. The one that sticks out in my mind as the most egregious use of medical tools and pharmaceuticals to cause fear to control the population and seeing this so blatantly portrayed was sickening.
Given the world Alex finds herself in, her attitude, strength of character and responses to the situation immediately endeared me to her as a character, even if her means were more than a little off putting.
The three women of the primary cast have a noticeable chemistry between them early in the series with the ensemble work, it felt like Pip was lost. Like she was there as a point of conflict for Alex and Jamie rather than an equal actor in the plot.
My issues with Pip as a character were largely alleviated as the show progressed and the character was more fleshed out. Her character experienced more growth and change than the others going from being a timid person who things happen to, to someone who is decisive talking actions.
I failed to connect with Jamie’s character the same way I did with the other two core women, but that’s not to say she isn’t fleshed out just that I had more of an affinity for two other main cast members.
This show is marketed as a dark comedy, but between a sexual assault and later a grisly sequence where Alex is presumed dead by her companions due to the sheer amount of blood loss, it’s more of a post-apocalyptic drama with light elements of sci-fi. This show has minimal comedy and a lot of situations that many would find upsetting, therefore my recommendation is to pass on “Creamerie.”