340 Wigs, 17 Tarantulas

Arte is genuinely the best thing on European television when it gets things right. They’d already run a film about Berlin’s dark nightlife—which delivered—and then their culture show Tracks put together a Tokyo episode that went somewhere most television doesn’t: secret boutiques you’d need a local to navigate, an art and music collective called the Trippple Nippples doing their particular kind of chaos, and a drag queen who shares an apartment with 17 tarantulas and 340 wigs. Not 339. Three hundred and forty.

The tarantulas might be the more interesting logistical commitment, but then again, 340 wigs requires storage solutions I can’t quite picture. Either way, that’s the kind of person Tokyo apparently produces with some regularity, and that’s also the kind of person television should be paying far more attention to. The whole episode was worth watching start to finish, but the Tokyo segment—landing somewhere in the middle—was the part I kept turning over afterward.