Summary
Eat, Pray, Love, and eat your heart out, here we have Sue behaving badly.
Netflix documentary series Sue Perkins: Perfectly Legal was released on Thursday, October 13th, 2022.
Sue Perkins is a British treasure. A comedian, actress (Hitmen), presenter (The Great British Baking Show), writer (Absolutely Fabulous), producer (Heading Out), and docuseries star (Japan with Sue Perkins) and now has another travel docu-series called Sue Perkins: Perfectly Legal. The title of this already makes me want to watch as we get the sense she might be breaking rules and causing a bit of havoc. Perkins has never been one to mince her words, she’s always come across as confident, intelligent, and with a great sense of humor. There are 3 wild episodes to enjoy that last roughly forty five minutes each.
Confronting middle age, Perkins has decided she wants to shy away from being a good girl and start doing something new, unusual, possibly dangerous, and naughty in South America. Get away from the conventional, let her guard down, and be free. Sounds a bit dangerous if you ask me Sue, but let’s see, rather her than me.
It’s as if she’s that adventurous friend who’ll try things out first so we don’t have to. Although, as she puts it, after being locked away alone for two years, with nothing but our thoughts, an adventure like this is what might be needed to feel alive again. After two years of nothing, suddenly we need and want everything. In this series, Perkins is doing everything she cannot do at home (in the boring, safe UK)
This journey is an impressive and interesting one, taking Sue around Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Bolivia, and a lot more. With her, we get to explore the darkest corners, to vast, incredible landscapes. Together we learn about Latin American people, their food, their beliefs, and their attitudes towards authority and life. Their attitudes and rituals surrounding mortality and death were quite refreshing. We’re rather morbid and harsh in the UK. In fact, after watching this it’s made me feel the desire to travel to these locations and experience some of what Sue has. The underground, violent wrestling, though, I would miss.
Perkins does everything, from being shot, to partying, to paragliding, everything in this series feels like a journey of self-discovery. There is a fine line between adventurous and reckless, and Perkins dances on this line all the way, but it’s safe to say that there is something addictive about danger. Maybe you need to have some near-death experiences to really feel alive — or to stop you from constantly worrying about death. Either way I feel like Sue had probably one of the best experiences here and filled a void she clearly had.
I really enjoyed this series. Sue is easy and relatable to watch, she’s got a great balance between being herself and a presenter. Well-media-trained she knows what we want to see and hear. Perkins, at times, is truly a typical Brit abroad. Her monotone calm voice over absolute hectic madness is brilliant to watch. I think she must have been screaming internally. I absolutely loved the use of classical music throughout, creating high levels of drama and intensity. I can’t wait to watch her in her 70s, maybe 80s, having another life crisis and maybe taking herself off to the moon.
Love you, Sue.
What did you think of the Netflix documentary series Sue Perkins: Perfectly Legal?
