Source : the age
This week’s options include Taylor Sheridan’s meditation on grief and fly-fishing, plus a new Pride and Prejudice spin-off, Lisa Kudrow’s comeback in The Comeback and a couple of catch-ups.
The Madison ★★ (Paramount+)
Who hates the city of New York more? Iran’s Revolutionary Guards or Taylor Sheridan? That is one of several unexpected questions posed by The Madison, the latest series from Sheridan, the prolific creator of Yellowstone, Landman, and Lioness. His new show may nominally be about grief and healing, but its disdain for NYC borders on zealotry. The city, on Sheridan’s show, harbours horrible people, rampant street crime and political correctness, and lacks fly-fishing opportunities.
Somehow, despite living in a penthouse thanks to massive Wall Street-related earnings, Preston and Stacy Clyburn (Kurt Russell and Michelle Pfeiffer), have remained good people. Their children and grandchildren? Completely infected. Preston’s balm is his holidays with his widowed brother, Paul (Matthew Fox), at their ranch in Montana’s Madison River Valley. They fly-fish, admire the magnificent landscape, and decry “that city”. Stacy and the family never visited, due to her aversion for using an outhouse.
That all changes when the brothers, on their way back from a rare fly-fishing spot, perish in an accident. Flung into grief, Stacy comes to the ranch, along with her extended family, to not just bury Preston, but to understand what he loved. They are coastal elites detoxing amidst the unsullied nature of the true America. It’s not easy. “What spoiled little bitches we’ve raised,” Stacy soon declares.
It’s important to note this is a very different Montana to that of Yellowstone. The Dutton clan were constantly involved in conflicts, but in The Madison’s corner it’s peaceful, the locals are solicitous, and even the county bureaucrats are unfailingly helpful. The storytelling is a kind of magical realism for traditional conservatives. Characters still give corrective lectures, as Sheridan voices are wont to do, but the topic is gluten instead of oil. Preston, present in flashbacks set around his fly-fishing schedule, is deified.
Russell takes this patriarchal portrayal in his stride, but Pfeiffer is exceptional in bringing a sharp emotional edge to Stacy’s loss. Whatever Sheridan writes, Pfeiffer elevates. Her anger is genuinely lacerating, even when it’s directed inwards, because Stacy was too much of a New Yorker to grant the stoic Preston his Montana dream. Pfeiffer’s performance and director Christina Alexandra Voros’ landscape compositions are impressive.
Sheridan gives the characters what he thinks they deserve. Stacy’s divorced oldest daughter and mother of two girls, Abigail (Beau Garrett), meets a sheriff’s deputy who is tender and philosophical, while the insufferable blonde younger daughter, Paige (Elle Chapman), gets stung by hornets – in that outhouse – just to emphasise she is literally a pain in the arse. That’s as subtle as The Madison gets.
The Other Bennet Sister ★★★ (Binge)
You don’t have to be a Pride and Prejudice obsessive to enjoy this spin-off, which is adapted with genial intent from Janice Hadlow’s best-selling 2020 novel of the same name. It’s easy to sympathise with Mary Bennet (Ella Bruccoleri), who among the five Bennet sisters looking for a husband is ranked last because she is lacking in the looks and social skills deemed essential in Regency-era Britain. With her mother (Ruth Jones) as her cruellest critic, Mary is a worthy underdog.
With accommodating half-hour episodes, Sarah Quintrell’s adaptation begins as a sideways view of Jane Austen’s classic 1813 novel. Mary’s struggles unfold even as the familiar fate of her sister Lizzie (Poppy Gilbert) and Fitzwilliam Darcy (Victor Picard) takes shape. But from the third instalment, Mary gets her own journey, escaping from Hertfordshire to London to act as the governess for the children of her aunt, Mrs Gardiner (Indira Varma).
Bruccoleri, who made her name in Call the Midwife, is particularly perceptive in revealing the slights and setbacks Mary must endure, and the subsequent emotional and intellectual freedoms she discovers in London. While the production values are a touch glossy (the Bridgerton effect?), it’s easy to be disarmed by this period rom-com, in which the genuine heroine meets the world on her terms. The quiet warmth is welcoming.
The Comeback ★★★½ (HBO Max)
A literal once-in-a-decade proposition – the previous seasons were released in 2005 and 2014 – this Hollywood satire from Friends star Lisa Kudrow and Sex and the City showrunner Michael Patrick King returns for the era of social media obsession, studio consolidation and technological crises. Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish remains comically lacking in self-awareness, even though she is in charge of a sitcom instead of trying to star in one, and Kudrow’s exquisitely awkward timing still delivers even if the subject sometimes feels familiar. Watch out for Ripley’s Andrew Scott in the supporting ensemble cast.
The Man in the High Castle ★★★★ (Netflix)
Liberally adapted from the Philip K. Dick novel of the same name, the four seasons of this dystopian 2015 alternate history are a welcome addition to Netflix’s second-chance licensing list. Set in a 1960s America divided between the victors of World War II, Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, the show’s early seasons have a menacing world-building and a telling focus on how people deal with the deprivation of freedom, whether it’s a Californian rebel (Alex Davalos is exceptionally good) or the head of the American SS (Rufus Sewell).
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die ★★★ (Amazon Prime Video)
For his first feature in 10 years, US filmmaker Gore Verbinski, who dominated the box-office with the first three Pirates of the Caribbean movies, goes renegade with this science-fiction action-comedy that draws from the original Terminator and plenty of Black Mirror episodes.
Sam Rockwell, oddball dial turned way up, plays an unnamed arrival from the future recruiting diner customers for a desperate mission to stop the nearby creation of a destructive artificial intelligence. It’s kind of a mess, but it’s specifically Verbinski’s mess and that makes for a propulsively chaotic ride.
This Way Up ★★★★½ (BritBox)
Nowadays, everyone has a long list of shows that deserved at least one more season, but I lament few shortfalls more than Aisling Bea’s remarkable comedy, which gave us just six half-hour episodes in 2019 and another half-dozen in 2021. Starting from the fierce, unpredictable bond between Irish sisters in London, played by Bea and Sharon Horgan, This Way Up delivered baleful banter, caustic romantic-comedy as Bea’s Aine deals with Tobias Menzies’ Richard, and a grounded portrayal of mental health struggles. Fleabag and Such Brave Girls fans should definitely catch up.
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