![]() This is bad enough if you are only making a basic vase, but if you are pouring your heart into creating an abstract series of tubes that represents the idealism of the young artist while dealing with the horror and struggle of the Aids crisis, then any sort of error has to be unbelievably frustrating. If you move the wrong way, if you grab the wrong thing, if the temperature is just a couple of degrees out, then everything smashes into smithereens and you have lost hours of intricate toil. Being the first of its kind, Netflix’s ‘Blown Away’ introduces us to the beautiful and somewhat enchanting world of glass-blowing. Glass, it turns out, is a very silly material to work with. It is, almost to the point of redundancy. Which isn’t to say that what they do isn’t incredible. They are all, without exception, so self-consciously “creative” that it makes you worry about a potential deficit of drama teachers in Canada. Leah looks like the presenter of a late-night 2002 Channel 4 awards show about architecture. Edgar is a mid-90s skater boy Janusz is a Peaky Blinder Kevin has been dragged by the goatee from 1967 San Francisco. ![]() What I love about the contestants is that they all appear to have been plucked from different but very specific eras in time. Blown Away: Season 2 Official Trailer Netflix Trailers RealityShows RealityTV GameShows GlassBlowing. ![]() You got to hand it to them: the judges ponder one of the contestant’s creations. However, that said, Blown Away does seem to have exclusively recruited from the jerkier end of the spectrum. I am sure plenty of glass-blowers exist in the world who aren’t jerks. Obviously this is a judgment that I have made from watching a television programme, which is a bit like watching DuckTales and coming to the conclusion that all waterfowl are embittered millionaires. I think all glass-blowers might be jerks. However, my fascination has another strand, and here it is. Everything about glass-blowing, at every step, screams: “This is not for you!” So on this level, it’s incredible to watch talented people do something that you could never do. The processes can only be achieved after years of intensive training. This isn’t MasterChef, where you can wander into the kitchen after an episode and replicate some of the techniques in your own home. My fascination in part stems from the fact that glass-blowing is an intricate, high-level skill that combines artistic vision with physical heft. I am only writing this to make you watch it, so I can have someone to talk to about it.
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