Dream Corp LLC - an Adult Swim show currently available to stream via Channel 4.
The conceit is similar to Matt Berry’s I Regress; the setting is a clinic of sorts, and every episode, a patient visits to have a psychological problem cured, only to gain a new – and worse - affliction. But the execution is disarmingly original. It’s set at some point in the not-too-distant future, and the dream-clinic is a dilapidated shell of its former self. Like the apartments in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil you get the impression that the building is alive – but where the flats in Brazil gasped and wheezed, the clinic in Dream Corp is a wounded beast, lacerated with scars that are not healing, and springing leaks that drip slowly down the walls before coagulating around the staff’s ankles. When a thick pink liquid begins to ooze from the gap between the walls and ceiling, the staff panic as if it were a haemophiliac with a chest wound.
While it’s billed as a comedy, there are many elements that might be described as horror – and parts of the universe are as grotesque as any Cronenberg. The ringleader of the clinic, Dr Roberts, has USB ports crudely rammed into the backs of his hands, the wounds still weeping after what must, presumably, be a number of years. Drips hang from the ceiling exuding a thin black oil, and patients are anaesthetised suddenly, and against their will.
In terms of format, the show’s half live-action sitcom (in the clinic), half rotoscoped-psychedelic-nightmare (in the poor unfortunate soul’s subconscious). The roto segments are visually and conceptually stunning – baroque in the level of detail, to the extent that it’s almost too much to take in in one viewing. Characters fall into gaping maw of an oven (complete with teeth and tongue), ride a tangled Escher-web of escalators, hot air balloons expand above the clouds, and funerals and birthday parties merge into one. It’s not so much a visual feast as a visual all-you-can-eat buffet – the choice of what to focus on can leave you feeling overwhelmed.
To
say the tone is dark is like saying 2020 has been ‘not nice’ – this is a world
in which staff members casually lose their hands to exposed laser-beams, robot
assistants commit suicide with such calendar regularity that the Doctor backs
up their servers the day before, and it’s routine for patients to become staff,
as their newly-gained phobias (courtesy of Doctor Roberts) prevent them from
leaving the building. It excels in the sort of aggressive surrealism that I
think of as Adult Swim’s hallmark; my favourite vignette, which takes all of
three seconds, featured a colleague asking another colleague for the time. The
operative looks at his watch. The face has no hands. No numbers. It’s a small
cylinder filled with sand. Two ants crawl in aimless loops.
“Ants!” He replies, cheerfully.
It
is, I acknowledge, not for everyone. I tried getting my brother to watch it,
and he had to switch it off after four minutes, saying it made him “feel
physically sick”. But if you think you might be interested in a mixture of
nightmarish psychedelia and relentlessly dark humour, GO FOR IT. It only takes
an hour to watch the first series and somehow Daniel Stessen has managed to
cram each 10 minute episode with a story arc for the staff, a patient of the
day, and fifty images that will stay with you for the week.
