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Eric (Netflix)
Benedict Cumberbatch has made a lot of daring choices in his career, which is part of the reason I am such a huge fan. I loved his performance in Power of the Dog, where he plays a sexually repressed rancher who can barely contain his rage at the world. And of course he was fabulous in The Imitation Game, and Sherlock, the list goes on.
This series takes him to a much darker place than usual with his portrayal of Vincent Anderson, a man not unlike Jim Henson, who has created a very successful children’s television program that features muppet-like characters. But Vincent’s show, Good Day Sunshine, is losing its audience, and we soon see that the pressure is starting to get to Vincent.
He and his wife Cassie, played by Gaby Hoffman, argue constantly, much to the dismay of their nine-year-old son, Edgar, a dreamy kid who has inherited his father’s artistic talents. When the others involved in the show come in one day with a new puppet, one that Vincent finds completely ridiculous, he starts to unravel, and after he and Cassie have one more of their terrible rows, Edgar disappears on his way to school the next morning.
After Edgar’s disappearance, Vincent discovers drawings Edgar had made of a new puppet, and he becomes convinced that building this puppet and getting it on the show will not only save the show, but convince Edgar to come home.
I wanted so badly to like this series, but there are a few major problems. Vincent comes from a very wealthy family, and the way his parents respond to Edgar’s disappearance is so over the top cold that I found it very hard to believe. There are several characters like that in this series, characters that deserve some thoughtful rounding, but end up being very one-dimensional, including the men who are the financial backers of the show.
Cumberbatch is brilliant as always as his life starts to unravel, and one of my favorite characters ends up being the detective who’s given the task of finding the boy, a closeted gay man named Michael Ledroit, played with wonderfully subtle anger and determination by McKinley Belcher III. But even the story of what happens to Edgar stretches the limits of believability in ways that made all that hard work difficult to overcome. You know something isn’t working when you see characters falling apart in front of you and it’s hard to give a damn.
Two and a half fortune cookies
You Don’t Know Me (Netflix)
This four-part series takes an entirely different approach to a court-room drama when the unnamed defendant in a murder case, played so fantastically by Samuel Adewunmi, fires his lawyer at the end of the trial because he knows that this will allow him to give the final argument himself.
This is the point where the series starts, and it’s fairly clear from the tone of the proceedings that most of those involved in the trial are convinced of the defendant’s guilt. But once he starts talking, and he uses the opportunity to tell the story of what really happened, we become absorbed in his tale, in large part because it soon becomes apparent that it fits the events presented by the prosecution, but his side of the story presents a completely different perspective.
As the defendant, who is a car salesman, proceeds with his story, of course most of what we see are flashbacks depicting his version of the story, which involves him meeting a beautiful woman on a bus and courting her by trying to make a perfect plate of spaghetti with carbonara sauce. It’s a lovely courtship, but things soon become complicated, and that’s where our hero got caught up in events that were soon out of his control.
Adewunmi carries this series, but the performances by Sophie Wilde, who plays his girlfriend, and some of the other major players in the unfortunate events, are also outstanding, especially some roles that would have been very easy to stereotype, particularly the victim, a drug dealer named Jamil, played by Roger Jean Nsengiyumva
.
Four and a half fortune cookies
Ren Faire (HBO Max)
This three-part documentary is kind of a Texas renaissance faire version of Succession. The story centers around eighty-five-year-old George Coulam, who went to a renaissance faire in California as a young man and decided to start one of his own when he got home. Much to George’s surprise, the faire became such a huge success that he eventually built an entire town around the fairgrounds, a town for which he became the mayor.
Fifty years later, George is burned out on running the operation, and much of the story revolves around his effort to find a successor, or as many people say, ‘a new king.’
The main thing that makes this story interesting is the fact that there is a lot of money to be made in this operation, and because George has become so obscenely wealthy, he has trust issues, and for good reason. Some of the players involved in wanting to take over the kingdom are entirely focused on the financial possibilities.
But there’s another storyline at work here, and that is the fact that George has become almost impossible to deal with. In fact, George has become something of an asshole. The series starts just after George has appointed one of his most loyal followers, a man named Jeff Baldwin, an actor who served as the entertainment director for a very long time before George gives him the job as general manager. Jeff is convinced this gives him the upper hand in taking over the faire once George steps down, but the audience learns that George thinks Jeff lacks the leadership skills for the job, so from that point forward, we have to watch while Jeff scrambles to do whatever it takes to make George happy, while George pretty much bullies and belittles him over almost everything he does.
In the meantime, George is also on the hunt for a companion to spend the rest of his life with, and has recently discovered online dating, so we have to watch a couple of painful dates. His profile states that he is interested in women who are between 30-50, but the two women we see him meet with are even younger, and the first question out of his mouth on both dates is ‘Are those real?’ pointing to their breasts. When the second woman confesses that she had some work done, he says “We’re done here.”
As you can probably tell, George is not good with people, so the thing that makes this series interesting is the way it shows how money and success can affect someone who may have once been the ‘beneficent leader’ people often refer to George as, but who has been corrupted by his own power. Even George’s house, an opulent mess that makes Mar-A-Lago seem classy, indicates that not all people who become rich and famous are worthy of adoration.
Four fortune cookies
McDonald and Dodds (Britbox, Amazon Prime)
This is a buddy cop series with a twist, as the two main characters are a young black woman, Laurent McDonald, and a guy they pulled from his desk job, where he’s nearing retirement, hoping the pressure of being in the field will speed up the process. Jason Watkins is an actor that will be familiar to a lot of you, and he’s great as Dodds, the seemingly bumbling guy with the big glasses and many-pocketed coat who is constantly testing the patience of McDonald, who is also wonderfully portrayed by Tala Gouveia.
The ‘seasons’ in this series are short, only two or three episodes, so they get down to business fairly quickly, with the first case being one where a seemingly homeless man is found murdered in the mansion of a wealthy businessman who happens to be on the verge of naming the successor to his empire.
This is one of those series where the cases don’t matter as much as the dynamics between the two cops, and of course McDonald at first thinks Dodds is going to be worthless, but he proves to have a sort of Columbo-like nose for the kinds of facts that will eventually break the case.
I found the second ‘season’ a bit less satisfying, but if you’re in the mood for a light-hearted bit of mystery, you can do much worse.
Three and a half fortune cookies
The Thief, His Wife, and the Canoe (Britbox)
This is another four-part British series, starring the always solid character actor Eddie Marsan as John Darwin, a man who faced such overwhelming financial difficulties that he concocted an elaborate plan to fake his own death by drowning, convincing his wife Annie to act the part of the grieving widow until they could collect the insurance money and eventually reunite and live happily ever after.
Although the initial plan doesn’t go quite as planned, Annie does convince the authorities that John has disappeared after going out to see in a canoe (actually a kayak), and for a time, it appears that they will soon get the money to move on with their lives.
But when John holes up in a small space in their apartment, it becomes apparent that the amount of lying, especially to their two sons, required to keep up the façade is taking a toll on Annie, who isn’t quite as submissive as she first appears. Her impatience with John’s complete focus on himself starts to put a strain on their relationship, and when they get some bad news from the insurance company that means it might take several more years to get the money, it means that Annie will have to ramp up the deception, which she’s not sure she can do.
This whole series depends on the performances of the couple, and Ann Darwin is terrific as Annie, sometimes wanting to badly to please her husband that she comes across as a patsy but other times finding it impossible to compromise her beliefs one second more.
Four fortune cookies
How do you do it, Russell? Viewing these many episodes might eliminate time from your must-needed slack time! Anyhow, I certainly enjoy reading the reviews. Yes, it's obvious that you watched them all.