Boots Riley on strikes, sedition and sex: ‘Being a communist is the closest to being a superhero there is’ [I'm a Virgo (TV 2023) Comedy + Fantasy + Superhero]

Riley’s I’m a Virgo sticks out like its main character: a 13ft-tall Black teenager. The premise alone is outlandish enough; what Riley and his team do with it, and how they do it, make I’m a Virgo one of the most bracingly original things on our screens this year or any other. And one of the most revolutionary: the show culminates in a full-on, top to bottom critique of capitalism – in a show streaming on Amazon. How did he get away with it?

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The anti-establishment politics was one hurdle; another was how to actually make a show with a giant character, Riley admits. Cootie (played by Jharrel Jerome) is raised in seclusion by his regular-sized aunt and uncle, who fear how the outside world will respond to a supersized Black kid – with justification. The naive teen is welcomed by some local youths, but also prompts fear and hysteria, not least from the neighbourhood superhero: a hi-tech vigilante in an Iron Man vein with shades of Elon Musk (played by a hilariously sullen Walton Goggins), who flies around in a robotic suit, enforcing law and order.

This isn’t the half of it. Cootie’s love interest, Flora (Olivia Washington), lives at super-speed, so the entire world appears in slow motion to her – which makes for one of the weirdest love scenes ever filmed. There are also comic-book characters, cults and TV shows, not to mention cameos from the likes of Elijah Wood, Danny Glover and even the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek (voicing a cartoon baby). Rather than glossy CGI, all of this is rendered with a charming old-school jankiness: using models, miniature and giant props, forced perspective, dolls, puppets, stop-motion animation. It’s a triumph of lo-fi craftsmanship.

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I’m a Virgo could really be seen as a subversive superhero show, and in that capacity it has proved uncannily prophetic, given the fortunes of the Marvel franchise and Musk this year. Goggins’s character, simply named Hero, is a self-absorbed entrepreneur who glorifies himself in his own comic books, and sets up Cootie as a monstrous adversary. But as Cootie’s politically aware colleague Jones explains, via a rousing sermon, Hero is part of the bigger problem of capital, labour, violence and law enforcement – he’s “a tool that helps capitalism run smoothly”.

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Will we see I’m a Virgo’s characters again, given the acclaim the series has received? Is there a season two on the horizon? “I definitely have other things in the pipeline,” says Riley. “Whether this is the last we’ll see of this world will be figured out very soon.” Either way, in a content-saturated landscape, I’m a Virgo found a way to distinguish itself, and proved that imagination and artistry are more important than budget. Hopefully, it has also shown other showrunners how bold and confrontational the small screen can be – especially when its goals go beyond simply entertainment.