It's Not Over 'Til It's Over

There was a whole introduction here, where I explained I didn't have enough to say about the shows I've been watching to make a post and how I was going to have to stuff what I did have into a grab-bag alongside a bunch of other odds and ends to pad it out. Then I started writing and the TV part alone came to almost two thousand words, which seemed like it might be enough after all. So that's what this post is now.

And even then it's only two shows. I was going to cover three because I thought that's what I'd watched all the way through to the end but it turns out I hadn't after all because one of them hasn't actually finished yet. It still has three episodes to go. That's what happens when Prime decides to switch things up and drop three episodes at a time. I'm not used to the cadence. It throws me off.

Nine did seem like a curious number of episodes for a full season but the last one, which obviously I know now wasn't the last at all, really did feel like a season-ending cliffhanger to me. I took it that way quite happily. I was only mildly disturbed it seemed to end on such a downbeat note. I thought it was quite brave, if anything.

I'd still be thinking of it like that if I hadn't just now decided to fact-check, ahead of writing this post, just to make absolutely sure there weren't any more coming. Only to find out that, yes, there were. Three more as of last night, in fact.

I'll hold off on that one, then, until I've watched those. Looks like the story might end differently to how I'd imagined. Now there's time for a happy ending, although I kind of hope that's not where it's heading, which sounds a bit mean but art can be unkind. 

I suppose I also ought to say what show it is. It's Vox Machina.

Another show I definitely have finished and will not be watching any more of is Kaos. Not because I didn't enjoy it. I liked it quite a lot. Because it's already been dropped by Netflix, who seem to have the attention span of a six week old kitten these days. 

Kaos is a mildly surreal, slightly disconcerting take on Greek myth starring Jeff Goldblum and an excellent supporting cast, including David Thewlis, who I have to admit I thought had died years ago. Must be confusing him with someone else. 

The eight episode first season very clearly sets up a second that's never going to happen unless someone else picks it up, which seems unlikely. There seems to be no obvious explanation for the decision, either, except that it didn't meet whatever criteria for success Netflix set. 

It was fairly successful in terms of viewer numbers and critical reception was fairly good but middling success doesn't seem to cut it with the streaming services any more. They do all need plenty of filler but they can buy those shows in from around the world much more cheaply than it costs to make their own. Kaos looks like it would have been expensive and expensive needs to be a big hit, not just to chart.

It ws also a hardish show to place, which probably didn't help. It was funny and scary and supernatural and romantic. More like a very long movie than a TV show. It's main strength was the acting, which was top-notch throughout. Jeff Goldblum was predictably mesmerising, shifting from affable bonhomie to chilling anomie with a deeply disturbing facility. He wasn't particularly likeable, though, and neither were several others in the main cast. That can't have helped, either. 

I liked just about everyone in it, as characters, but I found several of them uncomfortable to spend time with. It was never a comfortable watch. Unsettling, I think, is the word for it.

As well as a fairly large central cast, there were a lot of minor but significant characters too, all of them well-played. I could have used a little more of some, not least Suzy Eddie Izzard as the Fate Lachesis (Lachy if you prefer.) If I had to pick a favorite, though, it would be Thewlis's Hades, so underplayed he was barely there. A masterclass in subtlety.

The writing was mostly good, particularly the dialog, much of which sparkled. The plot seemed a little wayward at times. I'm not sure how much sense it would make if I watched it again, paying more attention. It seemed to be caroming along on impetus some of the time. Nothing wrong with that, though.

Visually, Kaos was sumptuous but also very distracting, for me anyway. I spent a considerable amount of time in the early epiodes not paying full attention to the story (Which might explain some of my issues with the plotting.) because I was trying to figure out if the Theban palace scenes had actually been filmed at Plaza de Espana in the Parque de Maria Luisa in Sevilla, a location I know very well.

It was indeed shot there. It could hardly be anywhere else. The place is nothing if not distinctive. In fact, pretty much the entire series was shot in Spain, much of it in other places I've spent time, although I can't pretend I spotted any other specific locations.

It's always distracting to see places you know turn up in fictional shows, especially when they're being used as stand-ins for somewhere else. I ought to be used to it, living as I do in a city where film crews closing off the streets for something or other is a near-constant disruption to daily life but I tend not to watch the kinds of costume dramas they're working on. 

In this case, though, the main effect the familiar setting had on me was to make me want to go back to Sevilla. It's been a while. It was good to visit again, even vicariously. Another reason to regret the untimely curtailment of what was a very enjoyable show.

In absolutely no danger of being canned after one season is another new Netflix show I've just finished: Nobody Wants This. If ever a show was named with unintentional irony, this has to be it.

Everybody Wants This would be a more appropriate title. As I write, it's sitting at 95% critical, 85% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, five stars on IMDB and #3 on the Netflix global chart after more than a month. Season 2 has already been commissioned.

It absolutely deserves all that praise and success. It's as close to flawless as anyone could possibly expect a sitcom about an agnostic podcaster who falls in love with a rabbi ever to be. 

I mean, come on! Look at that set-up. It stinks, doesn't it? Would you watch it? I wouldn't and I'm a huge sitcom fan.

So why did I watch it? Same reason everyone else did, I imagine. Kristen Bell.

Kristen Bell is a name I trust. I've yet to see her in anything that wasn't good or where she wasn't the best thing in it. She's a superb comic actor with a great deal more range than just that, as if just that wouldn't be enough. 

I'm currently watching another of her successes, The Good Place, several years after everyone else. I would have watched it sooner but for two reasons: the premise creeps me out and I had somehow managed to remain oblivious to her presence in the show, which must have taken some doing seeing she's the lead. It was only when Netflix helpfully recommended it to me as the next show I might want to watch after Nobody Wants This finished that I realised Kristen Bell was in it at all.

NWT Season 1 is ten episodes long and every one is a gem. Many of them would almost work as short stand-alone playlets, which is how sitcoms used to be before they turned into soap operas with gags. One of these days I might write something on situation comedy as a genre, in which case this show is going to be a case study. Is it a sitcom? Is there actually a definable situation here?

I asked myself that question a few times as I watched the series. It seemed much more like that misbegotten, bastard genre we blushingly call dramedy at times, especially when the seasonal arc seemed to be heading straight to the altar (Or wherever it is Jewish wedding ceremonies take place.) I was stumped, trying to figure out how a show based on the opposites attract trope could be expected to run for the six-to-eight seasons a hit sitcom requires, if the opposites turned out to be so very congruent by the middle of Season 1.

Turns out the writers had an answer for that, one which I won't reveal for reasons of spoilage. It's hard to imagine anyone hasn't already watched the show because why the hell wouldn't you but then I just admitted I'm five years late on The Good Place so go figure. It's always too soon for spoilers.

NWT is yet another show where the sheer quality of the acting is overwhelming. I swear, the older I get, the better actors become, most especially on TV. It's across the board, pretty much, too, domestic and international, broadcast and streaming. 

If I look back at shows I loved in the sixties, seventies, eighties and even the nineties I feel I have to make allowances for the time they were made. Individual performances match current quality standards and so do certain shows but the mean average bears no comparison. Actors are just better now. A lot better, many of them.

Or maybe directors are or writers or showrunners, a job that didn't even exist back then... Who knows? Maybe don't look for explanations. Just take the win.

The entire cast of Nobody Wants This shines throughout. Kristen Bell is exemplary as ever but so is everyone else. Structurally, the show manages somehow to be a star vehicle, a two-hander and an ensemble piece all at the same time. Adam Brody, who gets almost as much screen time as Bell, is consistently funny as rabbi Noah Roklov but his brother, Sasha, played by Timothy Simons, is funnier still.

But they're all funny. It's one of those shows where no-one is ever the straight guy and yet it very much isn't one of those shows where every other line is a zinger and it feels like the writers' room is right there on screen. I mean, I love those shows but they're one step away from stand-up. This is one step away from straight drama. And it's a small step.

It would be pointless to call out all of the cast members I particularly enjoyed because I particularly enjoyed just about all of them. I will say, though, that I hope the sisters' agent, Ashley, played with deliciously irritable elan by the surely-not-her-real-name Sherry Cola, gets more to do in the second season.

Other than to go on and on about how great it is, I don't have much more to say about this one so I'll leave it there. If you haven't seen it, rectify that immediately.

So that's television done. It turns out three shows, one of which I didn't even write about, was enough for a post after all. Who'd have guessed? Anyone who's been here before, I imagine.

It feels like the post is still missing a big finish, though. We need a tune and what could be better or more apt than Blondshell doing Veronica Mars? 

Yes, it may well be the third or fourth time the same song has appeared here. What of it? It won't be the last, either, I'll promise you that.

There are plenty of live versions on YouTube, not all of them with the greatest sound and few that can  replicate the emotionally evocative guitar squall of the studio ending. This one, from an Icelandic radio broadcast, comes as close as any and Sabrina just kills it. Best enjoyed very loud.