Special: Honest and funny Netflix series

When you have as much content as Netflix, you’d think it would have it all covered. But this new series is something special.

The first episode of Netflix’s new series Special isn’t very good. But stick with it because it gets better — much, much better.

Written by and starring Ryan O’Connell, based on his memoirs, the show is a lighthearted coming-of-age story about a young gay man living with mild cerebral palsy.

It’s also an experiment for Netflix as an eight-part series where each episode runs around the 15-minute mark. Special is, if not the first, then one of the first scripted short-format series, a ballsy move for a streaming service dedicated to keeping you hooked for as long as possible.

Special is short and sweet. You can polish the whole thing off in about two hours, but it won’t take you that long to be completely enamoured with Ryan. As a semi-fictionalised version of himself, O’Connell’s portrayal is warm and winning — you really want to root for him and you do.

The show is based on Ryan O’Connell’s memoirs.

In the show, Ryan is a 20-something man living with his protective mother Karen (Jessica Hecht) and starting an internship with a viral and social news website called Eggwoke.

On his first day, Ryan confesses he was in a car accident, and his co-workers wrongly assume his physical disability is a result of that. He doesn’t correct them. Instead, he finds freedom in being the guy who was in a car accident and not the guy who has cerebral palsy.

He befriends Kim (Punam Patel), a vivacious writer at Eggwoke, and starts to put himself out there more, and that includes his giddy crush on Kim’s friend Carey (Augustus Prew).

In its short episodes, Special manages to cover a lot of ground, and that’s a testament to its disciplined writing. It’s also funny, witty and heartfelt.

The direction from Australian Anna Dokoza (producer on Bored to Death, Divorce and Insecure) is also spare and minimalist, rightly throwing the focus on the writing while still carrying a consistent tone.

In one episode, Ryan has to wonder about his own prejudices or “internalised ableism” when he’s set up with a deaf man and later says something along the lines of “I may be disabled but I can do better than a deaf guy”.

Most of the stories involve some form of emotional negotiation of what it’s like to live with cerebral palsy and Ryan’s acceptance or rejection of it in any given situation.

The relationship between Ryan and his mother Karen is the most compelling

Then there’s his relationship with his mother Karen, that co-dependency and love that can’t quite hide the resentment underneath. That the series gives so much of its precious little time over to Karen’s characterisation, and has cast someone as experienced as Hecht, works tremendously well in filling out Ryan’s world.

Karen isn’t an afterthought, she is her own person with her own story and emotional journey.

Ryan is a fully-formed character with complex and contradictory ideas about himself and his world because that’s what we all are, rather than a two-dimensional TV stereotype.

Special feels real and lived-in because it’s O’Connell’s voice and experiences — which is why it’s so refreshing, honest and never self-pitying or condescending.

At the beginning, Ryan describes having mild cerebral palsy as like being bi-racial — as if he doesn’t belong in neither the world of the able-bodied or the one of those with more severe cerebral palsy. That’s the kind of line that only works if it’s coming from a place of authenticity.

Once Special gets over its initial rhythm issue — and it does so quickly — this is a show you’ll want to devour.

While its short format works well for how O’Connell has told his story, when you get to the end of the series, it leaves you wanting just that little bit more. How many TV shows can say that in this age of too much content?

Special is available to stream on Netflix from Friday, April 12 at 5pm AEST

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