History Series / KissMeFirst

''Kiss me First'' is a 2018 British SciFi Thriller distributed in the UK by Channel 4 and worldwide by Creator/{{Netflix}}.

Leila is a lonely young woman. Her single mother just passed away and she has to rent the spare room in her house and take a job at a small internet cafe to make ends meet and maintain her habit of ''Azana'', an MMO WideOpenSandbox computer game. There, she finds "Red Pill", a group of youths who gather in areas inaccessible to other players, created by their leader Adrian, who seems to have unusual freedom and control within the game. Leila soon meets and befriends Mania (Tess). But all is not what it seems. As events develop, it seems Adrian's intentions aren't as charitable as he claims and his influence over the members of Red Pill is leading them in dangerous directions. Now it's up to Leila to fight and expose Adrian before he drives the whole group to self destruction.

* BaitAndSwitchLesbians: ''Everything'' about Leila and Tess's relationship - from the cover, the promotional material and pretty much all of their initial interactions (including ''sleeping topless together'') seemed to be leading up to a romance between the two. Instead, [[spoiler: Leila pairs up with her tenant Jonty with no romantic chemistry or lead-up to the pairing whatsoever. She breaks up with him later, but the lack of followup between her and Tess is still incredibly jarring.]]

* BritishSeries

* VirtualReality: ''Azana'' has this as an optional feature, as can be seen by Leila sometimes accessing it with the simple monitor and keyboard set at her job, but characters almost always use the virtual interface. The members of Red Pill use sense bands that can induce pain and even replicate sensations like drowning for further immersion.

* CoitusEnsues: Leila decides to have sex with Jonty without really any buildup beforehand, and especially as until then she'd been heavily implied as having [[ShipTease a shared attraction with Tess]]. She later almost has sex with Kyle too, just after having met him, but backs out. It's possible she's trying to fill a void this way.

* AdultFear: Everyone on the show is dealing with very adult problems, even the teenagers.
** Leila [[spoiler: assisted her dying mother with suicide]] and is trying to keep a roof over her head.
** Tess is poorly managing her bipolar disorder and [[spoiler: dealing with the fact that she contributed to her father's quadriplegic state]].
** Ben lives in a foster home where it's strongly implied he's being sexually abused.
** Calumny's father beats his mother and he believes it's his fault.
** Jocasta is [[spoiler: hiding his male/transgender identity from his boyfriend for fear of Kyle's reaction]].
** Tippi apparently struggled with drug addiction in the past, and worked as a prostitute to pay for it.

* NotSoDifferent: Invoked by Leila in an attempt to persuade Ruth Palmer to help her. Leila claims they're alike since they both have [[spoiler: killed someone]]. Ruth makes it clear she doesn't see it that way and that it doesn't mean there's some sort of bond between them.

* MsFanservice: Leila and Tess appear partly naked in several scenes. Many of them aren't even sex scenes-Tess sleeps topless and gets Leila to do the same.

* MsFanService: Leila and Tess appear partly naked in several scenes. Many of them aren't even sex scenes-Tess sleeps topless and gets Leila to do the same.

* RippedFromTheHeadlines: Downplayed. While the events don't allude to a specific real case, hate groups such as neo-nazis are known to recruit from troubled youths in the internet, giving them a sense of community, belonging and purpose, and then weaponizing the loyalty thus gained into hate and violence. One of the most obvious allusions is that "red pill", the way the group in the show calls themselves, is also an expression used by these sort of groups to refer to "enlightenment" to the truth and rejection of the "indoctrination" of ideas, these ideas being things like "women, LGBT and non-whites are people too."

** The main character's username is [[Film/LordOfTheRings Shadowfax.]]

** Tippi is implied to have struggled with drug addiction in the past.

* OddFriendship: Tess and Leila are consistently shown to be very different people, but develop an intense, quasi-romantic relationship over the course of just a few episodes.
** May also be a case of OppositesAttract
* OneSteveLimit: All members of Red Pill have one word usernames with no punctuation, numbers tacked onto the end, or any of the other ridiculous efforts typically required to come up with a free username. When Leila searches Azana for "Adrian", the program tells her no such user exists. Probability that no other Azana user in the entire world has used "Adrian" as part of their username? Low.

* RomComJob: Leila and Jonty both work in coffee shops, with the latter seeking acting work. Tess is a dancer in the CoolestClubEver.

Leila is a lonely young woman. Her single mother just passed away and she has to rent the spare room in her house and take a job at a small internet cafe to make ends meet and maintain her habit of ''Azana'', an MMO WideOpenSandbox computer game. There, she finds "Red Pill", a group of youths who gather in areas inaccesible to other players, created by their leader Adrian, who seems to have unusual freedom and control within the game. Leila soon meets and befriends Mania (Tess). But all is not what it seems. As events develop, it seems Adrian's intentions aren't as charitable as he claims and his influence over the members of Red Pill is leading them in dangerous directions. Now it's up to Leila to fight and expose Adrian before he drives the whole group to self destruction.