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This week’s picks include Tina Fey and Steve Carell in a comedy that picks apart 50-something angst, a French drama about a superstar pastry chef and Brett Goldstein swaps Ted Lasso for stand-up.
This bittersweet American comedy about three couples dealing with 50-something angst cuts to the chase. When Jack (Will Forte) proposes a toast to finding your soulmate, his wife, Kate (Tina Fey), responds that marriage is about staying dedicated after the romance fades. Over eight succinct episodes, set over a succession of seasonal getaways, the Gen X gang push and prod at this divide. Nick (Steve Carell) is bored with wife Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver), while Danny (Colman Domingo) feels smothered by his Italian husband, Claudio (Marco Calvani).
Modelled on Alan Alda’s 1981 film of the same name, The Four Seasons was created by Fey (30 Rock), Lang Fisher (Never Have I Ever) and Tracey Wigfield (Great News). It is quite age-specific – full of deeply recognisable details if you’re around the characters’ 1970s origins or older, perhaps requiring generational subtitles if younger. “Complaining is their version of sex,” Danny says, with both accuracy and affection, of his college buddies Kate and Jack. There are spats and recriminations, but also support and mutual understanding.
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In other words, it’s not The White Lotus. The holiday chaos comparisons are hard to miss, especially when the second interlude is at a tropical eco-village, but Mike White’s acid-laced dissection goes for shock value and the dismantling of hypocrisy, whereas The Four Seasons has a hopeful streak and a narrow focus. Neither wealth nor race have much influence on the protagonists, despite obvious differences, just their personal dynamics as friends and lovers. The storytelling is short on audaciousness, but well-crafted.
The lack of jaw-dropping twists doesn’t mean that the concerns aren’t deeply felt, though. The back and forth in particular between the hard-nosed Kate and the sweetly anxious Jack, steadily digs into the compromises they make – or believe they make – as they look at the difficulties befalling their friends. As the stakes steadily get raised, it grows harder for each of the half-dozen to swat away the issues their partners have with them, even if the priority is droll banter. Fey still finds a way to use the phrase “French sex clown”.
The casting is divisive. Forte brings a comic’s exaggeration to Jack, while Domingo, a formidable dramatic actor currently on a run of best actor nominations at the Academy Awards, wrings the stubbornness and unease out of Danny. Perhaps the show should have chosen one approach and doubled down. Certainly, there’s a more intriguing tone lurking in every scene that Fey and Domingo share. They’re on a high-wire together. Modestly enjoyable as it is, the rest of The Four Seasons stays grounded.
Marie-Antoine Carême was the world’s first superstar chef. Born in the slums of Paris, he cooked for Napoleon Bonaparte and Tsar Alexander I during a celebrated career in the early 19th century. Carême’s books codified French cuisine, setting a benchmark for grand invention. Was he also a seducer and a spy? I’m not sure, but this biographical series about his ascent is such an enjoyable and resplendent adventure that it’s worth suspending your disbelief.
First seen as a patisserie prodigy working in a brothel kitchen, Carême (Benjamin Voisin) is pure rock and roll: facial scar, pirate earring, and Strokes-worthy hair. He’s all about pleasure – culinary and sexual – even as France is in upheaval, as revolutionary zeal gives way to the authoritarian impulses of First Consul Bonaparte. When Carême’s father figure is arrested, the budding young chef must bargain with Talleyrand (Jérémie Renier), a priest turned cunning power broker.
Directed with gusto by filmmaker Martin Bourboulon, who has a winning eye for period epics, this French-language series moves between the lush halls of power and the fiery kitchens below. The production values are glorious, and the intrigue comes with flinty historic realities and a measure of insight. Carême uses food as a means of expression and a bargaining chip, even as his brashness creates risk. Don’t sweat the accuracy, let him cook!
Irish actress Denise Gough is giving a furious, fascinating performance in the new season of Andor, but even she is hard-pressed to make this British thriller about a missing child more than a collection of outrageous twists and wild coincidences. Gough plays Elisa, the mother who drops off her daughter at a sleepover with a new school friend, only to return the next morning to find the house empty. Everyone, including Jim Sturgess as Elisa’s husband, has something they would prefer to hide, as Ambika Mod’s journalist soon discovers.
Action movie aficionados can happily feast on this bone-crunching extravaganza from Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans, who set the 21st-century standard for the genre with his Indonesian epics The Raid and The Raid 2. This time, Evans heads to America, with Tom Hardy (Venom) playing a compromised police detective forced to fight his way through a city’s entire underworld. Their collaboration confirms rather than confounds your expectations, but it’s made with an unerring eye – the fight choreography is unflinching and exact, the mayhem sublimely staged.
With Jimmy Page’s electric guitar as a kind of apocalyptic pulse – it sounds in turn ominous, thundering, and overdriven – this officially sanctioned documentary about the British quartet that took hard rock into the stadium stratosphere focuses on their formation and rise to fame at the end of the 1960s. Surviving members Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones tell affectionate stories and offer technical insights, while the archival access is particularly good for a group that was media-allergic back in the day. Very informative, very clean-cut. Nothing sordid here, except the music.
Ted Lasso star and Shrinking co-creator Brett Goldstein continues to flex his comic talents, delivering a stand-up special based on a live show he toured extensively. The English actor’s stand-up roots stretch back 15 years, and include Edinburgh Fringe appearances, but his material is very much post-Ted Lasso: the vagaries of success, getting invited to the Biden White House, and making enough money to question his “tax the rich” beliefs. Goldstein undercuts his hard nut persona with wry gags and absurd philosophical leaps. The tone can be uneven, but the concept is solid.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.
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