NETFLIX: Beef
You have to make it past nine episodes bristling with bottled, unbottled and volcanically spewing rage to get there. But in its final episode, Beef delivers the most beautiful, healing, funny and trippy scenes of peace and human connection I’ve witnessed onscreen in a long time. This conclusion is the flipside bliss to the despair that drives characters through the previous hours, and it makes the rocky journey worth it.
Steven Yeun (veteran of Georgia-shot The Walking Dead plus films including Minari, Burning and Nope) plays Danny, a Los Angeles-based, self-employed contractor working very hard to make his parents back home in Korea proud of him. Ali Wong is Amy, a Vietnamese American and entrepreneur who’s trying to parlay her boutique business vending elegant houseplants into a global brand.
Both driven in different ways, both battling intense external and mental pressures, they collide almost literally in a parking lot. While a fender-bender is avoided, epic road rage follows. And a grudge commences with enough power to become a transcendent force in both of their lives, for better and definitely for worse.
Created by Lee Sung Jin (Dave), the twistily plotted series shows how Danny and Amy’s determination to destroy each other embroils innocent family members: Danny’s hunky, sweet kid brother Paul (Young Mazino), and Amy’s equally sweet but spoiled husband George (Joseph Lee). Adding extra spice are antagonists David Choe, playing Danny’s criminally adroit cousin Isaac, and Maria Bello, hilariously awful as Jordan, the billionaire businesswoman Amy sees as the savior for her small business.
There’s been positive talk about the representation in Beef. And sure, the main characters are Asian American, and their cultural histories affect their ways of moving through the world. But for me, the show’s power is in its generalized, encompassing humanity. We’re all screw-ups. We’re all scared, and we all deserve to be loved. It’s a very worthy, unfortunately rare message to stumble over in the streaming landscape.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFPIMHBzGDs
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NETFLIX: Obsession
Who would have thought we would ever look back on the tail-end of the 1980s — those years of Reaganism and of sexual phobias fueled by the AIDS pandemic — and think of that period as a time of sweet, naïve innocence? One of the big books of 1991 was considered shocking at the time but now looks like what it really was: a page-turning piffle about two privileged white people being naughty and, for once, not getting away scot-free.
That was Josephine Hart’s Damage, made into a 1992 film by director Louis Malle with enough elegance and savvy casting (Jeremy Irons, Juliette Binoche, Miranda Richardson) that you almost didn’t notice the thinness and class presumptions of the source material. Or you just guiltily indulged in all those dirty, empty calories
Re-adapted by Lisa Barros D’Sa and Glenn Leyburn as Obsession and stretched out over four short episodes (the total runtime is 2 hours and 35 minutes), the series stars Richard Armitage playing London-based William Farrow, a doctor so famous that his latest surgery is given prime coverage on BBC Radio.
“It’s your name in lights — enjoy it!” says one of William’s colleagues, in case we miss what a fantastic physician he is. More breathless, tinny dialogue follows as his wife Ingrid (the always welcome Indira Varma) greets William with “Hello, handsome . . . this weekend’s about celebrating you, whether you like it or not!” These awkward opening scenes are designed to show us just how far William is fated to fall.
But the cause of that fall is a dud. Charlie Murphy (Happy Valley, Peaky Blinders) plays Anna, girlfriend of William’s son Jay (Rish Shah, making zero impression). That’s all she feels like: just a girlfriend, not the siren the story requires. (There’s some cautious dialogue, referring to Anna as a woman dangerously older than Jay, but that age difference appears to be a matter of months, not years.) When William and Anna first glimpse each other across a crowded room, the fire we’re supposed to feel doesn’t ignite. Their subsequent, frequent couplings — while poor Jay remains oblivious — feel less like High Tragedy and more like a terrible, semi-comical bachelor-party blunder you’d read about on BuzzFeed.
Though Malle’s film was no classic for the ages, it handled the source material intelligently. With his very British persona, Irons was perfect as the seeming prig whose loins are triggered by Binoche; her Gallic froideur and basilisk stare were exactly right as his counterpart.
Nothing in the new version convinces you the story’s worth a second look. In expanding the material along gender and racial lines (giving William a South Asian wife and father-in-law) and padding things out with new characters like Anna’s pal Peggy (Pippa Bennett-Warner), the new version dilutes whatever crystalline decadence the original slim novel and film possessed. Possibly the only way Obsession distinguishes itself as an emblem of our post-Me Too era is that it tries to explain Anna’s, um, damage with more backstory, only making her less interesting. And in a modern twist, the bulk of the nudity goes to William instead of Anna.
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APPLE TV+: Ghosted and The Big Door Prize
A gender-swapped take on James Cameron’s True Lies (average character discovers his/her seemingly average love interest is, in fact, an international spy, trailing glamor, spent ammo and a body count around the globe), Ghosted is pretty much like every other copycat riff that’s been spun since that 1994 film.
The supernaturally attractive Chris Evans and Ana De Armas play our leads. He’s Cole, an aw shucks farmer (!) and she’s Sadie, who has a meet-cute with him at a green market and claims she’s an art curator. That’s supposed to explain why she’s constantly jetting off on international trips but only underscores that Cole is a simple farm boy who’s as smart as a cornstalk for believing her story.
In truth, Sadie is a CIA operative, and soon Cole is embroiled in her latest trigger-happy assignment in London, Pakistan and other exotic locales where things can be blown up or shot at. In addition to surprisingly poor CG effects, Ghosted features some paycheck work by Adrien Brodie, Anna Deavere Smith and Amy Sedaris, and some mugging cameos by Ryan Reynolds, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan and John Cho. They all look like they’re having fun.
Very distant from Ghosted’s oversized, underthought scale, Apple TV+’s original series The Big Door Prize gets points for gentle whimsy. The ingratiating, crinkly-faced Irish actor Chris O’Dowd plays Dusty, a small-town high school teacher just hitting 40 and all its second doubts. They’re compounded by the mysterious appearance in the community’s general store (yeah, it’s that kind of fictional town) of a machine called Morpho that takes people’s fingerprints and Social Security numbers (the townsfolk are pretty dang trusting) and spits out a card with a description of their life potential. Some folks get cards declaring HERO or ROYALTY. Others, like Dusty, get more on-the-nose, disappointing/reassuring assessments.
The 10-episode series, ongoing through the spring, focuses each half-hour on one of the locals as they wrestle with the destiny predicted by Morpho. Shot partly in Georgia, it’s like one of Ray Bradbury’s flimsier stories, the kind he was whipping out on a cash-per-word basis early in his career.
To me, the show feels too much like its main character: a little too middle-of-the-road, halfway along the path to what it wants to be but unsure of what that is. I just didn’t find it interesting enough to stick with it past the third episode. Tell me if I need to reconsider.
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PRIME VIDEO: Judy Blume Forever
Some things never go out of style in America, like awkward puberties, embarrassing crushes, aching first loves and, of course, shrill denunciations of harmless books unread by the shouty people who demand that they be burned.
When I was drifting through middle school, the books of Judy Blume weren’t the sort of things I read. They seemed too girly. So it’s nice to learn, in Davina Pardo and Leah Wolchok’s engaging documentary Judy Blume Forever, that the YA novelist who was breaking barriers before the category was even invented spoke to young male readers as well as her females. Some of those fans are included in the film as lifelong penpals of the kind, industrious Blume. Then there are tributes from famous supporters like Molly Ringwald, Lena Dunham, Samantha Bee and Atlanta’s own Tayari Jones.
It would be nice now to take a nostalgic, what-were-they-thinking look back at the pearl-clutching parental furor caused by books like Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret and Forever back in the day. But our current era reminds us that, if the exigencies of teenage life remain eternal, so do cynical political cycles that regularly demonize speaking or writing honestly about basic human concerns. It’s a lovely, informative movie. And it bears the good news that, though Blume may be winding down her career as a novelist, she’s enjoying life as a happily married bookshop owner in Key West.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neWsO1Rk_q0
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APPLE TV+’s Schmigadoon versus Hulu’s Up Here
Over on Apple TV+ I’ve been happily geeking out on season two of Schmigadoon. Its satiric, tunefully incisive take on Broadway musicals of the 1960s and ’70s is as enjoyable as its parody of cornball mid-century shows was in the first season in 2021. Stars Cecily Strong and Keegan-Michael Key return, along with song-and-dance ringers Alan Cumming, Aaron Tveit, Oscar-winner Ariana DeBose, Kristin Chenoweth, Jane Krakowski and more.
So why doesn’t the show-queen inside me not respond to Hulu’s original musical fantasy series Up Here? It’s created by the Broadway and Disney minds that collectively brought us the book of Dear Evan Hansen and the music of Frozen and The Book of Mormon. Hamilton’s Thomas Kail directs some episodes, and the cast includes Broadway vets Katie Finneran and Brian Stokes Mitchell.
But I’ve found the first handful of episodes small, overly cute and cloying. The stakes feel painfully small. The show is about two 20somethings — Mae Whitman’s Lindsay and Carlos Valdes’s Miguel — trying to find success and love in Manhattan. Each is battling a singing, visible-only-to-them trio up there in their heads, representing clinging parents, old high school nemeses and so on. Minus the original show tunes and focused on a younger audience, Disney’s animated feature Inside Out did a better job with this in 2015. Or maybe I’m just too old for a show that has very millennial vibes.
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HBO MAX: Rain Dogs
I’m interested in eventually watching Am I Being Unreasonable? on Hulu, mainly because it stars British actor Daisy May Cooper. She’s apparently better known in the UK than she is over here. I’d only seen her in a small role in 2019’s delightful The Personal History of David Copperfield (also streaming on Hulu) and now in HBO Max’s eight-episode Rain Dogs.
I can’t explain the show’s title any more than I can fully recommend the series. But it’s weirdly watchable. Cooper plays Costello, a self-named, self-created single mother working at a London peep show when we meet her, raising her tween daughter Iris and generally avoiding her abusive best pal and worst enemy, rich toff Selby (Jack Farthing). Selby is gay, slutty but butch, and quick to hammer people half to death with his fists. He’d be an interesting character if Farthing could make all those battling traits jell in a believable way, but I’m not sure any actor could.
Rain Dogs, among its scattered goals, wants to be about the alternative families we create for lack of nurturing biological ones. But it doesn’t land its thesis. Costello and Selby are mutually toxic, each wheedling for a particular kind of sympathy and leaving emotional body counts in their wakes. The show’s a mess, but it has its own artless voice (from writer Cash Callaway, who has said that the character is not autobiographical, but sprinkle some salt on that claim).
Rain Dogs wants to be I May Destroy You, also on HBO. But just sharing some similar plot elements doesn’t put it in the same league as Michaela Coel’s unnervingly original series. Still, I kept watching, even though I think the characters the show wants us to view as lovable antiheroes are truly rotten, selfish people. I like Cooper, though. She has the same sort of no-nonsense approach (and blunt features) of fellow older UK actor Lesley Sharpe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WG2HcU3N60
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PRIME VIDEO: Dead Ringers
Come to think of it, Cooper also reminds me the tiniest bit of the American actor Bridget Everett, whose terrific HBO Max series Somebody Somewhere has started its second season. So I’ll be watching that, plus Prime Video’s new six-part Dead Ringers.
Originally made as a 1988 film by David Cronenberg, and starring Jeremy Irons (him again!) as brilliant, disturbed identical twins and physicians, it was untouchably disturbing. I’m intrigued by the notion of the new version, starring Rachel Weisz as both Beverly and Elliot Mantle, with an all-female creative team addressing the gynecological issues that gave the original film its extra thematic oomph.
Whatever you’re watching this month, enjoy! And if you aren’t enjoying it, turn it off. There’s plenty of other stuff out there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA_XOruRFfU
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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.
