APPLE TV+: Liaison
The pairing of French acting semi-legend Vincent Cassel — as lean and weathered as a Mediterranean reptile — and lithe, younger Gallic counterpart Eva Green made the six-hour Apple TV+ series Liaison seem like a must-see to me. Sometimes, though, your expectations will disappoint you.
Green plays Alison, a high-level operative at the National Cyber Security Center in London when the UK’s system is hacked by unknown forces with hints about coming attacks. Those become manifest when the city’s electrical grid flickers, and a train carrying school kids crashes when its brakes are remotely disabled.
Meanwhile, in Syria, Cassel’s Gabriel operates in the gray zone between global mercenaries and the DGSE, France’s version of the CIA. Astride both sides of legitimacy, he’s on the trail of Walid and Samir, two young Damascan tech nerds who hacked their way into the terrorist group’s London plans; they’re now on the run to save their own lives.
In their shared search to track these guys and cancel the chaos, Gabriel and Alison’s paths cross in London, Paris and elsewhere. The way they cast smoldering looks at each other clues us in that they have a capital-P Past together. It’s hard to care much about that, though, as the plot complications pile up in ways that just lead to deeper viewer puzzlement rather than satisfying ah-ha moments.
Capsule explanation: A careerist, pompadoured bureaucrat in Paris is in cahoots with a mysterious international collective. They’re hoping to frighten the UK into paying their syndicate big money to protect their cyber security, rather than turn for support from the European Union they Brexited in 2020.
Not exactly the sort of plot that makes you want to rush through all six episodes, is it? (The show continues with weekly installments through March 31.) The will-they-won’t-they tension between Alison and Gabriel is supposed to keep us riveted. But the chemistry isn’t that fierce. Cassel, who’s one of the show’s executive producers, seems more interested in creating some sort of franchise-worthy character. The role lets the actor show that, even nearing 60, that he can believably pull off screen brawls. On the other hand, the ease with which Gabriel infiltrates secured buildings and computers challenges a viewer’s disbelief more than his athletic scenes.
I didn’t exactly hate-watch Liaison, but I stayed with its six episodes due to a strange compulsion. I kept waiting to see if I was missing something, if its second-hand plot and the macho- Gallic depiction of Cassel’s character were distracting me from some bigger picture at work. But no. It’s an honorable almost-ran.
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PRIME VIDEO: Shotgun Wedding
For an alternate fix of romantic skullduggery featuring two screen hotties, coming in at only one-third the length and making no attempts to confuse you (or even make you think at all), there’s Shotgun Wedding. Yes, it’s another guilty-pleasure flick that puts JLo in a wedding dress. A brand is a brand, right?
Here, Jennifer Lopez plays Darcy, newly arrived at a Philippines resort with fiancé Tom (Josh Duhamel) for a wedding that the bride-to-be feels is too lavish. (In a nice gender twist, Tom is the control-freak groomzilla.)
Moments before they’re scheduled to walk down the poolside aisle at their hotel, Darcy and Tom have the sort of ring-tossing tiff that makes their reconciliation a plot engine. In other words, Shotgun wants to be a classic comedy of remarriage, like The Awful Truth or The Philadelphia Story. Well, a girl — even a girl as rich and beautiful as Lopez — can dream.
Anyway, complicating the couple’s spat, a boatload of masked pirates invades the hotel grounds, holding all the guests hostage except for Darcy and Tom. Wedding then turns into an action flick with a body count as the duo bests the thugs with zip lines, cake knives, hand grenades and the occasional runaway golf cart.
The cast is too good for a disposable romcom-action-romp like this, but it probably allowed them some nice beach access, if too much time in the pool. (That’s where most of the actors spend their time pruning after they’re rounded up by the pirates.) Lenny Kravitz plays Darcy’s impossibly hot former fiancé, and Darcy Carden (yes, an actual Darcy) of The Good Place is a New Age-y, too-young girlfriend for another character. Both actors are so interesting, you can guess they’ll play key roles in the climax.
Hiring still-gorgeous Brazilian actress Sonia Braga to play Lopez’s mother seems less like vanity than ideal casting. You can see how great cheekbones like Braga’s could beget a matching pair for the bride-to-be. Cheech Marin as Darcy’s dad? Well, genes battle out for supremacy in utero, and in the movie’s fictional world it looks like Braga’s won.
Maintaining her status as a secret weapon in everything she’s in, Jennifer Coolidge plays Tom’s exuberant, loud mom. Atlanta actor Steve Coulter as her husband has the good sense to play amiable second banana to her and give her the floor. Or the pool, anyway.
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HULU: Extraordinary
If pirates are invading JLo’s movie, superheroes continue to overwhelm our screens, with only zombies coming in second. In a welcome tweak on the scourge, the British comedy series Extraordinary presents us with a recognizable world. Well, recognizable except for those people who can fly and have a side hustle as airborne Lyfts. Or the ones who walk through walls. Or trigger instant orgasms in anyone they touch.
On her 18th birthday, our heroine Jen (Mairead Tyers) didn’t develop the supernatural prowess just about everyone receives then. Her younger sister has just celebrated coming into superstrength, and their jovial mum is played by Siobhan McSweeney, known as the nun to fans of Netflix’s chaotically sweet/dumb Derry Girls. Jen’s best friend Carrie (a delightful Sofia Oxenham) is in heavy demand as a young woman who channels the dead. And their newest, unexpected roommate is an underfed young man (Luke Rollason) who has spent three years trapped in the body of a cat — discovering his human identity is one of the characters’ plot motivations.
Both high-concept and easygoing, the bottom-line message of Extraordinary is a good one. Superpowered or not, people keep being who they really are: heroes or villains, sweethearts or assholes.
A side note: Because I was so taken with the Oscar-nominated performance of Paul Mescal in Aftersun (he also has a colorful small role in Netflix’s The Lost Daughter), I’ve circled back to watch Hulu’s 2020 series Normal People. I’m about halfway through, and the show. The precise emotional interplay between Mescal and female lead Daisy Edgar-Jones is quietly spectacular. A lot of you probably already know that. If you’re a latecomer like me, I highly recommend it.
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APPLE TV+: The Reluctant Traveler
You could say that Canadian comedian Eugene Levy has made a profitable career by being who he really is. Or who he appears to be: a professional grump, or confirmed wuss. “I’m 75, and maybe it’s time to expand my horizons,” he says, unconvincingly, in the opening moments of the limited documentary series The Reluctant Traveler.
Shuffling in the footsteps of hip-sophisticate global wanderers and gourmands like Anthony Bourdain and Stanley Tucci, professional noodge Levy is no one’s idea of a perfect traveling companion. He’d rather stay at home. (Baltimore novelist Anne Tyler should demand profit share from the series; her Accidental Tourist contains the seed idea that Reluctant develops.)
Here, hosted by obscenely expensive hotels in exchange for screen time/free advertising, Levy spends eight half-hour episodes bopping from Lapland to Venice to Tokyo, whining all the way. This middlebrow shtick is so unmodulated, it gets old quickly. The producers’ focus on cliched points of interest (ice fishing in Finland, noodles, sushi and sumo wrestling in Tokyo, gondola rides in Venice) is disappointing. So is the scripting, which has Levy ending each episode with second-hand musings about the global family of man. Easy on the eye, the show nevertheless feels as tired as Levy constantly pretends to be.
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NETFLIX: Cunk on Earth
Philomena Cunk, the fictional figurehead of Cunk on Earth, would ruthlessly skewer the sort of cozy homilies that spill from Levy’s mouth. Over five half-hour episodes, the cockeyed, sometimes foulmouthed series demolishes the sort of pompous, history and globe-spanning documentary programs that have been the lame default on our small screens for decades.
Well-known in her native UK but a glorious newcomer stateside, Cunk – – played with proud, benighted disdain by Diane Morgan — slogs her way through various World Heritage Sites around the planet, getting every bit of history she encounters wrong. She refers to the doomed 1912 ocean liner as the Titan 1C, blurts dunderheaded comments about world religions, and finds a way to insert the video of 1987’s “Pump Up the Volume” into every episode.
She’s like a female Alan Partridge, that media-whoring idiot created by Steve Coogan. Only, there’s one big difference: In her innocent oafishness, Cunk is actually likable. You could also see her as a gentler version of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G or Borat, ambushing learned professors of history with her profound ignorance. (One of the show’s delights is seeing these eggheads try to politely maneuver their way around Philomena’s sometimes surly demeanor.)
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APPLE TV+: Sharper
It’s telling that visual motifs of a chessboard and watch cogs recur in the Apple TV+ original film Sharper. Its plot is as precise and strategic as those images suggest, and also as impersonal.
There’s a strong tradition of unreliable narrative filmmaking designed to fool (pleasurably) the viewer by pulling the metaphorical rug out from under us. Think David Mamet’s House of Games or The Spanish Prisoner, or on a bigger scale, The Usual Suspects. We like to be conned, at the movies anyway.
Sharper provides some of those thrills, but to diminishing returns. For maximum benefit, if you like this sort of thing, it’s better if you don’t read any more; just watch it cold.
The movie introduces us to book store owner Tom (Justice Smith, weak link in a strong cast). He’s smitten by a young stranger named Sandra (Brianna Middleton), searching for a copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Romance ensues. But Sandra’s wastrel brother, never seen but heard pounding on her door, leads to a big loan, a betrayal, and the abrupt shift of focus to another character, Max (Sebastian Stan). He’s the addict son of Madeline (Julianne Moore), herself the new paramour of billionaire Richard (John Lithgow).
You won’t be surprised to learn that all the characters, including Tom and Sandra, are interconnected in ways that aren’t exactly who or what they first seem to be. That’s the cleverness and the weakness of Sharper. When the majority of the characters are pulling some kind of con or switcheroo on one another, it’s hard to root for, well, anyone. But it’s all nicely directed by Benjamin Caron, and shot with luster.
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NETFLIX: Lockwood & Co.
Based on a YA series of books, Lockwood & Co. might be mildly pleasurable for younger viewers who like spooky stuff, but not too spooky. In an alternate reality, the United Kingdom has been beset for 50 years by an influx of the dead, here called “The Visitors.” These phantoms of the once-living can wreak havoc on those still alive, even “ghostlocking” victims into a vegetative state. Only children and teens can detect and battle these malevolent ghoulies, only to lose their power as adults.
Ruby Stokes of Bridgerton is our teen heroine, Lucy, who runs away from an unloving mother in suburbia to join the shoestring ghost-battling team of the title. It’s run from his house by posh orphan Anthony Lockwood (Cameron Chapman), assisted by nerdy pal George (Ali Hadji-Heshmati).
Adapted by Joe Cornish, who helped pen the first Ant-Man and wrote and directed Attack the Block, Lockwood is surprisingly a little sloppy in its world-building mythology. It never really took hold for me. Watching it, I felt much as I did with Liaison. I kept waiting for it to get better, to find a deeper, newer, surprising identity. Oh well; it’s harmless enough.
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HBO MAX: Marc Maron: From Bleak to Dark
Meanwhile, “harmless” is not a word you’d apply to Marc Maron: From Bleak to Dark. I mean, the comedian’s last standup special on Netflix was called End Times Fun, coming out in the heart of Covid in 2020. The bad times keep happening in his new HBO show, where he riffs on religion, internet idiocy, abortion rights, aging and death. And yeah, he’s really funny. But he isn’t safe.
Musing on the loss of his girlfriend Lynn Shelton, who died suddenly in ’20, he recalls viewing her body in the hospital room… then delivers the most spectacularly dark, one-word punchline you’re likely to hear. Yes, it’s really funny, too. Consider yourself forewarned, though.
Also on HBO Max, despite my original instincts, I’ve been sticking with The Last of Us. Its third episode, a sidebar that takes a breather from the undead action to focus on a couple played by Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett, already feels legendary in the ways people talk about it. The other episodes have also been strong, especially the story of Henry and his brother Sam (Lamar Johnson and Keivonn Woodward). In her two episodes, Melanie Lynskey made a spectacular antagonist, a folksy, self-justifying murderer. But the saga’s heart remains the classic pairing of Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal as the smartass teen heroine and her reluctant protector.
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Steve Murray is an award-winning journalist and playwright who has covered the arts as a reporter and critic for many years. Catch up to Steve’s previous Streaming column here.
