Easing into 2019

This post falls under the Jeopardy category of “Potpourri,” and I will add to it as I watch a variety of new streaming video.  But I start off with an urgent recommendation for the Netflix original series Russian Doll (MC-89, NFX).  This series of eight half-hour episodes – from Natasha Lyonne, Amy Poehler, and Leslye Headland – works on so many levels (and in so many timelines) that it’s hard to know where to begin.  But Natasha is the source of the story, the face of the show, and the title character, as it were.  She’s been a treat to watch since Slums of Beverly Hills, a rough-voiced and tough-talking kewpie doll, and this character is very personal to her own story.  Unapologetically smart, the show borrows freely from many sources, the most obvious being Groundhog Day, for the premise of living the same day over and over again till you get it right.  But it also reminded me of Scorsese’s After Hours, for its phantasmagoria of downtown Manhattan night life.  But the beauty of the premise remains very much its own thing, continuously inventive and surprising.  Nadia Vulvokov is a 36-year-old computer game engineer, with complicated feelings about her mother, who died at that very age.  On the night of her birthday party, she dies once, and then many times in succession, until she can work through the event’s levels of complexity, as if it were a computer game.  Along the way, she meets a man in a similar plight, played by Charlie Barnett.  Tightly constructed and wildly funny, this series is a puzzle worth solving.   Like a matryoskha doll, it has many levels nested within itself, finely crafted and detailed.  And appropriate to the story, it’s something you will want to watch again from the beginning, the minute you finish it, for all the new details you will see second time around.

Here near the top of this survey, I need to insert a plug for one of the best new streaming series, Our Planet (MC-90, NFX).  Most of the extremely-accomplished team from the Planet Earth series comes over from the BBC to Netflix, with more emphasis devoted to devastating human effects on climate and habitat for disappearing species.  Hi-Def digital cameras and aerial drones contribute to more and more spectacular nature cinematography, with topnotch music, editing, and narration (David Attenborough -- age 92!) making for a gripping total package.

There’s a fine show on Hulu about sex and power from a woman’s point of view, and it certainly isn’t A Handmaid’s Tale.  I infinitely prefer (i.e. am willing to watch) Harlots (MC-74, Hulu), a series about prostitution in Georgian England that is written, produced, and directed exclusively by women, with juicy roles for a host of accomplished actresses.  There’s Samantha Morton exploiting her sympathetic qualities to give humanity to a bawdy house madam who does quite awful things; Lesley Manville as her supervillain competitor, an absolutely and deliciously evil anti-Mum; and Jessica Brown Findlay as a queen between the sheets, rather than dying there as in Downtown Abbey.  Many more characters too, of considerable diversity of race, gender, sexuality, and personality.  With one notable exception, the men are either powerful and odious, or weak and duplicitous.  Liv Tyler arrives in the second season, to demonstrate that aristocratic women don’t have it much better than the whores.  I initially got a Peaky Blinders vibe from the show, a street-level view of the underside of historical British city life, set to a modern beat.  Costumes and set decoration are first rate.  Dialogue is witty and pointed, plotting complex and headlong, characterizations compelling.  If not one of the best series now running, it may well be among the most underappreciated.  Two seasons of eight episodes are now available, with a third in the works.  So Lesley Manville must be commuting between new seasons on this set and Mum’s.

Ramy (MC-87, Hulu) has arrived, and Ramy Youssef is a welcome new voice, melding the appeal of first-person, free-form, non-white series like Atlanta or Master of None, with the Muslim Millennial perspective of Hasan Minhaj.  He may also have picked up something from Please Like Me, since he features his real-life friend since grade school, in this case a sardonic, wheelchair-bound muscular dystrophy patient named Steve.  In such an egocentric project, a little humility is required, and Ramy remains admirably empathetic.  As the 10-part initial series goes on, multiple perspectives emerge – we see Ramy as a NJ middle-schooler on 9/11, spend an episode or two getting to know his sister, enjoy a stand-out portrait of his mother’s empty-nest blues (played by superb Palestinian actress Hiam Abbass), and travel with him on a disillusioning/serendipitous roots visit to Egypt.  Ramy is personable, thoughtful, and real, and this half-hour sitcom doesn’t feel that it has to keep the jokes coming, and all the better for it.  [This will be my last insert in this round-up (4/28), as I will be away for a couple of weeks, and will start fresh when I return.]  

You might have to be a sucker for costume drama adaptations of 19^th century British novels to enjoy Vanity Fair (MC-66, AMZ), but I am and I did.  Olivia Cooke plays Becky Sharp rather winningly, though not quite as sanitized as Reece Witherspoon in Mira Nair’s 2004 adaptation.  She has a sharper beak for vulturizing the British aristocracy, but still comes across as a plucky heroine in Thackeray’s “novel without a hero,” rather than a grasping and conscience-less social climber.  Despite some modern touches, the 7-part miniseries, created by Gwyneth Hughes, remains relatively faithful to the book, and the usual array of British acting talent goes through its paces, along with the set and costume designers.  I can’t give it thumbs up or thumbs down, just a single palm-down waggle of the hand.

Let me interject an endorsement of Hulu here.  Though its bread & butter – streaming network tv programming – offers me very little nourishment, I’ve been surprised by how tasty its appetizers, sides, and desserts have proved.  Besides good British imports, there’s a smattering of important foreign and independent films, and a really striking array of documentaries (though this may all change now that they’ve just been acquired by Disney).  The latest I’ve watched is a Sundance hit from last year, Three Identical Strangers (MC-81, Hulu).  It comes off as a crowd-pleasing “human interest story,” about triplets separated at birth who serendipitously discover each other as 19-year-olds, becoming daytime talk-show celebrities and Manhattan bon vivants.  But then the estimable journalist Lawrence Wright enters the film, and it takes several darker twists, about the boys’ initial separation and subsequent trauma.  The history of the adoption agency that placed them comes to seem in conspiracy with Freudian psychiatrists using humans as lab rats.  It’s a lot to take on, and director Tim Wardell tries too hard to stretch his material, at just 90 minutes, to cover multiple sides of the story (a few perfunctory re-enactments are particularly egregious), but the film is watchable and thought-provoking.

Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes (MC-71, Hulu) is nothing special as a film, but is informative about how Ailes became such a force in Republican politics, long before he ruled over Fox News.  Of course I knew all about his role in The Selling of the President 1968, Joe McGinniss’ book about his media management of Nixon, but still it was impressive to see how he was operating behind the scenes all along (whispering in Reagan’s ear, crafting “Willie Horton” campaign for Bush 41, ushering a startlingly young Mitch McConnell into the Senate).  There’s some analysis of how hemophilia affected his worldview, and eventually killed him, plus an interesting sidebar on how he tried to play lord of the manor in Cold Spring NY, and of course his eventual comeuppance for sexual malfeasance.  It’s important to know your enemy – even if he’s dead and disgraced, his spirit still rules the Republican party, to our country’s peril.

Another late addition to quality docs from Hulu:  Tea with the Dames (MC-83, Hulu).  Director Roger Michell intrudes on a gathering of old theatrical friends – Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins, and Joan Plowright – at the rural Elizabethan cottage where the eldest lived with her husband Larry (Olivier, that is).  Their tales of long and distinguished acting careers are mixed with personal anecdotes and reflections, frequently illustrated by old photos and film clips.  It’s delightful to get glimpses of them as young women as as well as to hear them banter as octogenarians, over a lifetime of work and friendship.  Candid and acerbic, as well as cozy and comfortable, these dames are damn good company.

“Reminiscent of Wes Anderson” would not normally be a draw for me, but it does describe a documentary that I quite liked, 306 Hollywood (MC-66, PBS), broadcast on the PBS series, POV.  A sister and brother, Elan and Jonathan Bogarin, memorialize their Jersey Jewish grandmother with a phantasmagoria of filmmaking.  She lived at the eponymous address for 67 years, and seems never to have thrown anything away.  After her death, faced with clearing out this house they used to visit every week, they make the year-long task into a film, which never faces their grief head-on, but approaches it from dozens of different angles, from the scientific to the whimsical, from miniature to cosmic, from artful to demented.  The grandmother is a familiar type, but a very particular person, and the siblings have a lot of fond fun with her story and her stuff, as well as their memories.  If you can’t visualize what I’m talking about, take a look at the trailer.

Another first-person documentary that I enjoyed was Shirkers (MC-88, NFX).  When she was a teenager in pre-boom Singapore, director Sandi Tan made a film (also called Shirkers) with her two best friends and many acquaintances, under the aegis of a mysteriously transnational film instructor, who then disappeared with all the canisters of the film.  Ms. Tan managed to recover the footage more than twenty years later (sans sound) and structures her story of unearthed memories and retrospective interviews around it.  This film comes across as a profound and searching excavation of personal and film history, more honest and astringent than self-indulgent.

Wandering again from my heading, I have to add several postscripts to “Binge-worthy Brits.” You don’t have to be an English major to enjoy Upstart Crow (BCG, AMZ), but it certainly helps.  David Mitchell (of Peep Show fame) plays Shakespeare in anachronistic yet somehow authentic parody, each episode giving the back-story for one of his plays.  I find it witty and hilarious, so much so that I was able to overcome my aversion to sitcoms with laugh tracks.  Even more, it made me a pull an unread book off the shelf, Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World, so I could track the parody of Shakepeare’s life more closely.  So far, I’ve watched two seasons’ worth, and will be back for more.

If fast and funny is what you’re looking for, then take a look at the recent Britcom Hang Ups (BCG, Hulu).  The show’s creator and star, Stephen Mangan, plays a sketchy therapist trying to save his career, and his disheveled home life, by offering rapid-fire webcam sessions.  This opens the door to a marvelous procession of familiar faces (if you’re into British TV), hilariously improvising their characters online, while the hapless star reacts, in the meantime trying to deal with the family chaos offscreen.

While those two shows may require a certain Anglophilia to appreciate, here’s one whose appeal is transnational, except for the prudish – Catastrophe (MC-92, BCG, AMZ), which has just returned for its fourth and final season.  Given the ease and intimacy of the lead couple, extending to easy aggravation and disgust, it’s hard to imagine that this series’ cowriters and costars Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney are not a couple themselves.  On the other hand, how could they sustain that intensity at home and at work?  So – whew! – they each have stable homes to retreat to.  I’ve raved about this show in previous seasons, but now that it’s complete and perfectly rounded off, I have to position it among my all-time favorites.  The title references Zorba the Greek – “I’m a man, so I married.  Wife, house, children, everything.  The full catastrophe.” – and I have rarely seen such an honest and funny depiction of the attractions and antagonisms of married life.

While discussing favorites, I have to acknowledge an excellent new season of High Maintenance (MC-81+, HBO), but if I haven’t already turned you onto this anthology series about a weed delivery guy biking around boho Brooklyn and dropping into various lives, then another rant is not going to get you hooked.  But this is just a reminder for those who may have lost the thread – you know who you are.

Inside No. 9 (BCG, Hulu) attracted my interest by winning multiple British comedy awards.  This BBC comedy/suspense anthology series, created by and starring Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, has a different storyline and cast for each episode, so it is easy to sample, rather than binge.  (Hulu has first two seasons, Britbox all four to date.)  It’s clever, diverse, and well-made, but not quite my thing, not as funny as the previous three Britcoms, and not as mind-messing as the better episodes of Black Mirror.  Still, a good bet to fill a stray half-hour.

HBO generally does well with political docudramas, and Brexit (MC-73, HBO) is no exception.  You can see why they recruited Benedict Cumberbatch to play the savant strategist behind the Leave campaign, for his Sherlock-y qualities, though he makes the character distinctive even when reminiscent.  This film goes way beyond reminding you of the similarities to the 2016 U.S. election – in the exploitation of data-mining and push advertising – going so far as to identify the same super-villain, Robert Mercer (though no appearance of Rebekah).  It’s all quite propulsive and plausible, humorous and informative.  Jolly good show.

In our Humpty-Dumpty era (when the emperor has no clothes and truth is the “enemy of the people”), perhaps it makes sense that comedians have become the best political, social, and economic reporters.  Now add Kal Penn (best known as “Kumar,” but also an Obama White House appointee) to the familiar quartet of Daily Show alums – Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Samantha Bee, Hasan Minhaj – with the series This Giant Beast that is the Global Economy (AMZ).  He teams with director Adam McKay, of The Big Short, Vice, and Succession, to cover various topics in eight hour-long episodes, from some of which I actually learned things (“The Rubber Episode” in particular), even though by the end I’d wearied of the flip tone and repetitious gags.

I liked Velvet Buzzsaw (MC-61, NFX) more than Nocturnal Animals or The Square, which is not saying a hell of a lot, but I understandably get drawn into films about the art-world business of galleries and museums.  While the other two are horrors, this is a flat-out horror movie.  As in Nightcrawler, Jake Gyllenhaal teams up with director Dan Gilroy, but where the earlier film was genuinely creepy and disturbing, this one devolves into slap-happy gore.  What starts as satiric winds up as silly.  Still, it’s a sleek and knowing portrait of a slice of LA life, but nothing I’d recommend.

There’s a lot to be said for Steven Soderbergh’s latest on-the-fly production High Flying Bird (MC-78, NFX), but I’m not going to say you should see it, unless you have a particular interest in the business of the NBA, and its relationship to slavery.  Provocative, funny, and well-acted, this film suffers from an absence of actual basketball, as the canny agent played by Andre Holland (who comes over from Moonlight, along with its screenwriter) schemes for his clients during a league lockout.  Soderbergh’s D-I-Y approach, shooting on an iPhone, reflects the themes of the film and takes the camera to unexpected places, but doesn’t look all that great, and while the story is worth telling, the dialogue is a little stagey and comes across as agitprop.  “The revolt of the black athlete,” indeed.