It’s not particularly insightful to make jokes about video gamers being socially awkward weirdos who spend all their time alone in their rooms and are incapable of normal human relationships. While the British gamer sitcom Dead Pixels makes plenty of those easy jokes, it also develops its main gamer characters beyond the stereotypes, drawing humor from their unique personalities. It’s far from a groundbreaking take on video game culture, but it’s funny and fast-paced, with a likable pair of characters at its center. If nothing else, Dead Pixels is a far less condescending take on geek culture than American sitcom monolith The Big Bang Theory.
The biggest problem with Dead Pixels’ arrival in the U.S. (the six-episode first season premiered in the U.K. in March 2019) is that it’s airing on The CW, and thus subject to the standards of broadcast television. A lot of the show’s humor is neutered thanks to the near-constant bleeping, which also often throws off the rhythm of creator Jon Brown's dialogue. Most likely the show will eventually be available unedited on a streaming platform in the U.S., but in the two CW episodes available for review, the censorship is distracting enough to almost negate the show’s appeal.
That appeal comes down to best friends and roommates Meg (Alexa Davies) and Nicky (Will Merrick), who are obsessed with the fictional MMORPG Kingdom Scrolls, which they play as part of a guild along with American gamer Usman (Sargon Yelda). Even though Meg and Nicky live together, they still interact mostly via screen, and the show spends plenty of time within the game’s amusingly garish world, as the characters bicker and trash-talk each other while represented as brightly colored fantasy avatars.
But Meg and Nicky are not just lonely losers. They both hold down nonspecific office jobs (where they spend most of their time playing Kingdom Scrolls), and they have love lives, or at least they attempt to. The first episode opens with Meg on a double date along with third roommate Alison (Charlotte Ritchie), only to ditch out on the group’s real-world badminton game when she gets a call from Nicky about a Kingdom Scrolls “emergency,” that the guild’s castle is on fire. Later, Meg awkwardly hits on her dim co-worker Russell (David Mumeni), and one of the character’s most endearing qualities is how unabashedly horny she is, with elaborate metaphors to describe her sexual appetites.
Russell eventually joins the guild, despite the objections from Nicky and Usman, and he and Alison represent the show’s take on video-game outsiders. Alison is a seemingly well-adjusted “normal” person who’s entirely baffled by the world of video games (but mostly treats Meg and Nicky with indulgence), while Russell is the newbie player who spends his time in Kingdom Scrolls screwing around and having fun rather than pursuing loot or leveling up. Nicky scoffs at the idea of “having fun” while playing a video game, and Dead Pixels effectively captures the dull grind of a certain type of gaming, as the players spend their time waiting around for respawns or monotonously killing small creatures to rack up points.
There’s a mean-spirited streak to some of the humor that emerges more strongly in the second episode, in a storyline about the characters’ anger at Vince Vaughn being cast in a film adaptation of Kingdom Scrolls. Meg and Nicky engage in an online harassment campaign against Vaughn that embodies some of the worst aspects of toxic fandom, and the show presents it more as lovable quirkiness than as the dangerous entitlement it can be in the real world.
Creator Brown has described himself as a hardcore gamer, so maybe he doesn’t have the personal distance necessary to see how misguided this storyline is, but it’s an unfortunate misstep for a show that mostly remains cheerful and light. It’s also an example of censorship killing the show’s humor, as The CW completely blurs out the presumably vulgar protest signs against Vaughn that the characters’ avatars carry within the game. Instead of looking at a joke, the audience is left staring at a screen full of missing words.
There’s also a mean-spirited aspect to the character of Usman, who neglects his offscreen family in favor of playing Kingdom Scrolls, letting them endure illness and injury so that he doesn’t have to leave his couch and stop playing the game. Brown seems torn between offering a funny, sympathetic portrayal of gamers and going darker by making his characters into nearly amoral narcissists. The show is most appealing when it’s more affable, when the characters are relatable and real, even for people who’ve never played a video game.
They’re passionate introverts with a hobby that means a lot to them, and that’s easy to understand. Davies and Merrick are both charming and funny in the lead roles, and it’s easy to root for them to succeed both in and out of the game. It would be nice to hear all the words they’re saying, too, but at least The CW is giving American audiences a chance to sample this show’s off-kilter take on gaming culture.
Starring Alexa Davies, Will Merrick, Sargon Yelda, Charlotte Ritchie and David Mumeni, Dead Pixels premieres Tuesday on The CW at 8 p.m. ET/PT.