Binge-r #158: The Politician + GameFace
Fortunate Son: Gwyneth Paltrow (Georgina) and Ben Platt (Payton) in The Politician
THE POLITICIAN
Streaming Service: Netflix
Availability: All eight episodes now streaming
Netflix paid a nine figure amount to secure the television auteur Ryan Murphy – he writes, directs, produces, and provokes – after the success of the American Horror Story and America Crime Story anthologies, plus series such as Pose and 9-1-1. His first streaming series, the acidic and sometimes audacious The Politician, nominally returns him to the setting of an earlier hit: the high school environment that fostered Glee. That show was a celebration of arts and hopefulness, whereas the latest incarnation is a satirical drama about political ambition and ennui. An exclusive Santa Barbara private school is a backdrop to a student president campaign that is played out like a Presidential race – it’s so tense and unpredictable that you expect a CNN news ticker to chart every new development.
Murphy, along with co-creators Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan, goes for heightened contradiction and melodramatic flourishes: the wealth porn has a Wes Anderson plumage, Jessica Lange goes large in a supporting role, and the bon mots are all about the discreet harm of the bourgeoisie. “Patricide is so on-brand for the twins,” notes Georgina Hobart (Gwyneth Paltrow) to her favourite (and possibly less homicidal) son, Payton (Ben Platt). Determined to be elected America’s President one day (“the air of impossibility has been removed,” a university dean concedes), the adopted Payton has constructed an electable veneer that sees him working angles with his teenage staff while trying to avoid questions about his own personality and flaws.
The first of many difficulties is that wildly popular classmate, and possible love interest, River Barkley (David Corenswet), also decides to run for student president, but this show is so voracious in how it tracks plotting that there’s no easy summation possible. It will jump from the tart to the devastated and back with adept ease, even while finding ways for Broadway star Platt to sing a musical number. The political context gives the show a chilly edge, but it is so skilfully engineered that the latter episodes are genuinely involving as the many strands tie unexpectedly together. Murphy uses the soap opera as a vehicle for satirical farce, and while this will turn off some of you as much as it excites others, it’s the kind of wild mash-up that works for me.
Better Things: Roisin Conaty (Marcella) in GameFace
GAMEFACE (Stan, six episodes): Stan continues to pick up worthy English productions with the first season of Roisin Conaty’s deceptively barbed sitcom about a Londoner taking very small steps in fixing her life. Quick to avail herself to “the Trinity: carbs, fags, wine”, Marcella Donoghue (Conaty) is a failed actress and failing temp whose flaws lead her into embarrassment and complications without being malicious. It’s an important distinction, as there’s a warm-hearted core to the show that persists beneath the prevarication and provocation, as Marcella deals with a long-term ex who got married on the rebound while her life coach and driving instructor offer advice she’s sometimes loath to act on. It’s a funny, fulfilling series, and Conaty has crafted a protagonist that is both recognisable and more than just “a mess”.
>> Great Show/New Season: The first weekly episode of the fourth and final season of The Good Place arrives on Netflix tonight. The loopy, humanist half hour is one of the best comedies streaming. If you haven’t discovered it yet, start now [full review here].
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
New on Netflix: Between Two Ferns: The Movie (2019, 82 minutes) is as hit and miss as most movies derived from a comedy sketch series, with Zach Galifianakis scoring on willing celebrity conscripts; Jack Reacher (2012, 130 minutes) is Tom Cruise in tough guy action movie mode, without the enjoyable excess of the Mission: Impossible franchise but helped by Werner Herzog as a creepy criminal mastermind.
New on SBS on Demand: The masterful Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda found many new admirers with 2018’s Shoplifters, but his bittersweet outlook and eye for tender telling detail is equally apparent in After the Storm (2016, 118 minutes), the story of a compromised private investigator trying to reconnect with his family as a hurricane looms, studded with quiet longing and necessary truths.
New on Stan: Nicole Holofcener’s Friends with Money (2006, 88 minutes) is an intimate, knowing portrait of privileged female friendship starring Frances McDormand, Catherine Keener, and Jennifer Aniston; Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005, 85 minutes) remains Aardman’s finest feature-length stop-motion animation, a classic Brit horror/buddy movie mash-up that still delights.
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