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Reviews
Hello Ladies (2013)
A predecessor of You're The Worst
I decided to check this out in 2022 after re-listening to some of Steve's XFM shows with Ricky Gervais.
I can see on here it has polarised viewers but I found myself in the middle. If you like Steve's persona on Xfm or his standup, you will feel at home here.
Reading some of the reviews here before the pilot, I was worried it was going to feel dated like a lot of the cringe comedy that The Office spawned in the 2000s, but it is a dating comedy with a more modern tone.
Indeed, it has a lot in common with the more recent You're the Worst: a British fish out of water, socially awkward on the LA dating scene. Apparently shut out of the more glamourous side of things, he still.has a huge place peopled by wacky friends with an indeterminate source of income.
Having watched a few episodes, I'd say it's short on laughs, although Merchant throws himself into some moments of slapstick. As a British viewer, I could do without another Bumbling British Man (We say cheerio! We congratulate ourselves on our wordplay!) Merchant is even self conscious enough in the pilot to pronounce "aunt" two different ways. Yet his performance doesn't grate on me as much as Chris Geere's in You're the Worst, where at one point he refers to a royal blue "Manchester jersey", which is about as authentic as an American holding what looks like an Eagles jersey saying "My dad got me a New Jersey shirt".
The show benefits from a likeable female lead and, though many of its supporting characters are a little more broad and coarse, I was surprised at the ambitious number of characters it sought to introduce in the pilot. I think they had hopes it would go the distance, but it wasn't to be.
Small Axe: Mangrove (2020)
The ingredients for a great documentary make for a formulaic drama
I came to Small Axe because it was on the "best TV of the year" list of many British publications, but I knew nothing about it going in. I expected all of the episodes to be fictional, and so was surprised to see that the anthology is actually a mix of fiction and non-fiction.
Mangrove is rather hampered by this. Dol Isaacs obviously suffered harassment from the Met for many years, and so McQueen portrays him in unequivocal terms: as an innocent man pursued by the police, dubbed repeatedly and perhaps significantly by Isaac as "devils".
This is an entirely reasonable thing to do, but as a source for a drama, it precludes the possibility of any shades of grey or three-dimensional characters: this is a story about angels and devils. Issacs' previous relationships with gambling dens, which are the Met's ostensible excuse for persecuting him, are skated over. When, instead of reopening the restaurant, he opts instead to have the Mangrove open 24 hours a day and apparently welcomes gamblers in, the decision is not explained or examined.
What we are left with is an innocent man being unfairly treated by police who have no human characteristics. The actors playing the police officers spend most of the time sneering like comic book villains. Equally unconvincing are the court scenes, in which the Mangrove Nine spend the whole time heckling in a way I found hard to believe. Whenever I watch this kind of drama, I find myself wanting to see a documentary instead, especially because this case involved Darcus Howe, who I always had a soft spot for.
Mangrove looks great and has some excellent performances, especially from Gary Beadle as Isaacs, but it is the most formulaic racial drama you can imagine, with no surprises along the way. I have read that McQueen struggled for years to get it into production, so perhaps when he finally got the chance, he chose to portray British institutional racism in such stark terms as a righting of a historical wrong, but the resulting message is one that you will have seen in dozens of other shows and films.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015)
Missing 30 Rock's intelligent/stoopid balance
I came to Unbreakable after watching 30 Rock twice during lockdown. That show's combination of cleverly-written silliness is often my go-to de-stressing option and, crucially, I found the stoopid characters funny, which I think is key to whether or not you enjoy a "wacky" show.
Unbreakable has a lot of similarities with 30 Rock, not least some cast members, but it lacks something: Tina Fey. Liz Lemon is an ultimately relatable character. Occasionally crazy, yes, but usually intelligent, and her extreme success on TGS is balanced out by her failures to find love, exercise, learn Spanish, etc.
Unbreakable has no such intelligent center. Indeed, Kimmy is an unusual mix (I say this after 8 episodes). I initially thought she was going to be Indestructibly Sunny, so positive New York can't break her, but as the show goes on, she develops a Lemon-like love for slams, followed by uncool celebrations (e.g. yaBurn, or however you spell that). Those flashes of wit, however, look strange next to her total naivety in other moments. At least at this early stage in the show, it's like the writers didn't know which thread to pull on: Kimmy Says Idiotic Things Like It's the 1990s or Kimmy Is Surpsisingly Sassy.
Unfortunately, a lot of the characters around Kimmy are very one-note too, so not much about their antics take you by surpise:
- Jane Krakowski's Cyndee is Jenna Maroney Lite. Just spoiled, rich, and ashamed of her background. She has none of the sexual mayhem or rabid talent that Maroney had, so Krakowski has less to do.
- Dylan Gelula's Xan reminds me a little of Chloë Grace Moretz in 30 Rock. I suppose even dating back to Mean GIrls, Fey has liked portraying whip-smart teens, but though I warmed to the dynamic between her and Kimmy, the performance at the moment is a little repetitive (vocal fry tones leavened with occasional signs of weakness).
- Ki Hong Lee as Dong will, I suspect, become a more rounded character. But a couple of episodes in, he is simply a Sweet Immigrant. He mixes up his words! He mentions certain gestures are offensive in his country! And while I am childish, the Dong stuff has not made me crack a smile once.
I have tried to get into this twice now, and while I don't see it as an aberration, and would sooner watch it than your average network sitcom, it's not in 30 Rock's league. Fey's new show, Mr Mayor, has had mixed reviews so far, and I would definitely like to see her write a show (or you can still star in stuff, Tina, you know!) in which her obvious love for zany characters is balanced by an intelligent center.
El desorden que dejas (2020)
Have to agree with other reviewers...
In TV and Cinema, teaching is portrayed in one of two ways. 1) The teacher delivers inspirational monologues and the students hang on his every word (Good Morning Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds and, for lovers of TV from Spain, the recent Merlí). 2) The teacher is summarily ignored and abused by his students (Simpsons, High School High, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Fast Times at Ridgemount High, Breakfast Club).
The Mess You Leave Behind definitely falls into the second category, but does it to such a ridiculous extent that it detracts from the basic premise of the show, which could have been interesting.
The Plot Against America: Part 3 (2020)
Series gaining moment (but horrible accents)
I am giving this series a shot because I enjoyed The Wire so much, but I found the first two episodes a little slow. In this episode, with the Canadian element, I felt like I was finally watching something which wasn't predictable (to me the basic problem with the series is that the "imagine America had turned out like this" has been done to death, so the context, in my opinion, doesn't need as much setting up).
However, as other reviewers have noted, the English accents are a distraction for British viewers. Not Dick Van Dyke crazy, but the kind of performance which sounds off and unnatural from the first sentence. Odd considering Simon used two Britons in starring roles in the Wire, that he couldn't find a couple more.
Matadero (2019)
Spanish Fargo with tonal problems
This was sold as a Spanish Fargo, and apart from the Minnesotan snow being replaced by Castilian sunshine, it is so similar it could almost be a remake. We have loveless marriages, normal people getting involved with drugs, likeable hitmen and small-town caricatures.
The problem is the tone. While both the film and series of Fargo functioned as a drama leavened with blackly comic moments, Matadero combines its Fargo-esque style with broad moments of physical comedy which owe more to Hot Shots or Naked Gun. Three scenes in particular, one with a character called Montanas, another with a deacon making a phonecall at gunpoint, and a third with a fight scene between Pascual and Vasco, were so stupid I almost gave up on the show.
Elsewhere, a romantic storyline between two cops approaches soap opera at times. especially with the choice of music, and Fermín, the boss of Alfonso's wife, is such a stereotype of an oily salesman that I don't think he has any place in such a show. I also see his storyline as a common custom in Spanish dramas and films: to pack in extraneous subplots which only really serve to add to the running time.
My final problem, perhaps a bugbear of mine in many dramas, is the credibility factor. My enjoyment of a drama is in inverse proportion to how many times I think "You would never do that". Even if the context is extreme, like Breaking Bad, there can be at least an internal plausibility to the show. Matadero is full of moments where drugs and money - the show's two most obvious MacGuffins - are carelessly abandoned, and many action scenes suffer from a James Bond-style, "Well I'm not going to kill you just yet" attitude.
If you are interested in seeing shows from around the world, or want some Spanish practice, it will serve those purposes. But nothing else.
A footnote: I was sad to hear of the death of Filipe Duarte, the actor who plays Vasco and who also stars in El Tiempo Entre Costuras.
The Last Czars (2019)
Big Budget But Nothing Else
The show reminded me a little of Antonio Banderas' Picasso, in that it looked great, but had some unforgivable dialogue. After Nicholas gives a speech, someone actually says "Good speech", and that after lots of comedy "Oh my God this speech isn't appropriate looks". Elsewhere, Nicholas, who is a clichéd weak leader in the show, is openly doubting his readiness, and is told: "Trust yourself. God chose you. Divine bloody right." It is not a subtle script, rather one in which sex and occasional light swearing is injected into it in an attempt to make it seem less stodgy.
I think it's also hindered by expectation: it went up on Netflix yesterday and I clicked on it thinking it was a drama, and I suppose many others did too. In fact, it is not even a conventional docu-drama. We have not only the ubiquitous Netflix Narrator, found in every drama from Narcos to Guardian Diablo, but also cutaways to historians, some of whom seem to be going for acting awards - one calls the Tsar "Nicky", another opens his eyes widely to emphasise his point.
All in all, I would say a very high budget version of the kind of thing you might find on National Geographic, with a distinct lack of love showing on the script.