Why do you lie so much?”
This is the question posed to Tracey, the larger-than-life protagonist of Chewing Gum, at the end of the premiere of the Netflix show's second season. Tracey makes a practice of weaving complicated, patently false tales in response to the simplest questions—it's just her method of deflecting from actually feeling anything.
“I don’t know,” she tells her ex-boyfriend, Connor. In the first moments of the second season, which premiered on Netflix Tuesday, Chewing Gum finds its leading lady, played by the show’s writer, creator, and theme song co-composer Michaela Coel, returning to an affordable housing complex in Tower Hamlets, London, after a three-month leave of absence. She’s single, homeless, on the outs with friends and family, and squatting in the bodega where she works. That's where Connor tracks her down, months after their split. It’s an almost-tender moment in a series that is allergic to them. When vulnerability emerges, it's all the more conspicuous among all the gross-outs (a memorable season-one arc involves a plan to resell used dildos; season two kicks off with some violently orange vomit).
Chewing Gum premiered on the British channel E4 (the network best known for teen hits Skins, Misfits, and The Inbetweeners) in 2015 and came to Netflix late last year, where it won a strong American following. It’s an adaptation of Coel’s one-woman show Chewing Gum Dreams, which she wrote as a drama student at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and premiered at London’s Yard Theatre to a sold-out, five-day run during her senior year.
