You season four part one
Penn Badgley is back as Joe Goldberg for the fourth instalment of You on Netflix. Over the last three seasons, fans have watched Joe’s unhealthy obsessions with women leave a trail of bodies in his path. The last season ended with Joe faking his death to travel to Paris to track down his latest love interest. However, season four begins with a curve ball and sees the protagonist living a new life in London as an English professor. He’s on what he calls his “European holiday” and hopes to put his old life behind him. But when he wakes up from a drunken night at a prestigious club to find his colleague and neighbour dead in his flat, he finds himself in the middle of a whodunnit-style mystery.
After three seasons of watching Joe go through variations of the same formula, the newest series shakes things up by adding a refreshing (but nevertheless sinister) twist that puts Joe on the back foot. He’s now the one being targeted by an unknown party, with it now being up to him to figure out who the killer is. Further complicating matters is that he can’t seem to shake his old habits and develops an infatuation with Kate (Charlotte Ritchie), his neighbour who he can conveniently see from his living room window. While an overreliance on exposition-heavy flashbacks causes the first episode to get off to a rocky start, the steady drip of new information combined with pitch-perfect pacing creates an engrossing mystery that’s hard to step away from.
In addition to the fast-paced mystery and murder, You is likewise a lot of fun to watch. The show deploys a playfully wicked sense of humour, which takes aim at the social elite who form Joe’s list of prime suspects. The circle of wealthy socialites he becomes entangled with are as narcissistic and apathetic as each other, with the joke being that they’re as sociopathic as Joe. Driving the tone is Badgley’s sardonic internal monologue that puts a tongue-in-cheek and somewhat meta spin on the events as they unfold. Joe isn’t a character who viewers necessarily want to root for, but Badgley’s mesmerising performance makes him one that fans can’t get enough of.
However, those eager to know how Joe’s London adventure ends will need to wait until the second part of the series drops on 9th March.
Andrew Murray
You season four part one is released on Netflix on 9th February 2023.
Watch the trailer for You season four part one here:
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