Binge-r #193: Space Force + Little Fires Everywhere

Space Oddity: Steve Carell (Mark Naird) in Space Force

SPACE FORCE S1

Streaming Service: Netflix

Availability: All 10 episodes now streaming

The highly successful American edition of The Office has many fans, and clearly Netflix is one of them. The streaming service’s new comedy, Space Force, reunites that show’s creator and star, Greg Daniels and Steve Carell respectively, in a new workplace comedy. A paper company and the start-up branch of the United States military are vastly different settings, but there are similarities: a thwarted boss lacking in self-awareness, eccentric staff, and an underlying belief that the ludicrous is our default setting. Trying to solve a delicate orbital difficulty, Steve Carell’s General Mark Naird suggests with impeccable military logic using a bomb. “That is very often the right answer,” he insists. If only this show could have always been so confidently idiotic.

Donald Trump, whose real life announcement of a Space Force gave Daniels and Carell their opening, is never mentioned by name, but even as “POTUS” he’s around, as well as the First Lady’s helpful suggestions, to make life difficult for Carell’s four star general. Naird’s other difficulties include a chief scientist who hates the militarisation of space, Adrian Mallory (John Malkovich, with marvellously indistinct accent), and a daughter who hates living in Colorado, Erin (Diana Silvers). The show loves to send up the soldier’s discipline and duty mindset, but it doesn’t want Carell’s character to be a complete buffoon. That’s why the tone of the episodes varies so widely: the second is hilariously absurdist, the fifth close to melancholy. I greatly preferred the former.

Steve Carell can paper over some of these cracks because he excels at sending up this kind of lockstep approach, and the writing does intermittently give him some sharp lines – “we haven’t had a My Lai yet,” he happily notes while preparing for his first Congressional oversight hearing. The supporting cast is expensively assembled but underused, with Ben Schwartz reprising his business douche persona from Parks and Recreation as Naird’s annoying social media director F. Tony Scarapiducci; the great Lisa Kudrow has a side role as Mrs Naird, who is indisposed for much of the series. Space Force plays as if it’s trying to balance a scathing premise with genuine affection for the participants. It leaves you curious about where it will go next, but any comedy that’s intermittently lacking in laughs has a problem.

Kitchen Confidential: Kerry Washington (Mia) and Reese Witherspoon (Elena) in Little Fires Everywhere

LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE (Amazon Prime Video, all eight episodes now streaming): It may be set in the Clinton-era United States of 1997, but this limited series drama headlined by Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington – both playing to their considerable screen strengths – captures the uncomfortable civility of a racially fractured society in telling the eventually destructive story of a black mother and daughter who become intertwined with a well-off white family across personal, economic, and political layers. If that sounds didactic, it’s not: there’s a spiky metaphorical kick to the dialogue that amplifies the broad themes through the specific lives of Washington’s Mia and Witherspoon’s Elena, and there’s multiple lens through the viewpoints of the teenage children in both families, who make connections that complicate and sometimes incite the two mothers. Four of the eight episodes in Liz Tigelaar’s adaptation of Celeste Ng’s 2017 novel were directed by the late filmmaker Lynn Shelton, who quietly marshals the many undercurrents that surge through the narrative. It’s about the roles women want and will allow themselves, and it impressively updates classic melodrama with a flinty precision.

>> Great Show/New Season: Deceptively insightful and seditiously funny, Ramy is back on Stan with new episodes. Playing the titular New Jersey bro with a hoodie and a Koran, co-creator Ramy Youssef is an everyman trying to make sense of his life (and less mistakes). The new season adds the formidable Mahershala Ali as Ramy’s spiritual mentor, with the Millennial trying to straighten up. It’s highly recommended [season one review here].

NEWLY ADDED MOVIES

New on Netflix: Blade Runner: The Final Cut (1982, 117 minutes) is hopefully the definitive final version of Ridley Scott’s science-fiction masterpiece about the mysteries of mortality and the wonders of film noir; Defined by emotions so acutely realised that they’re breathtaking, Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight (2016, 110 minutes) is equally a masterpiece about the coming of age as a black child who is gay and impoverished.

New on SBS on Demand: A city has rarely received a quintessential film better than Los Angeles did with Chinatown (1974, 125 minutes), director Roman Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne’s 1930s thriller about the corruption public and personal required to make a modern metropolis that is made pungent by the performances of Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and an unforgettable John Huston.

New on Stan: Bridesmaids (2011, 125 minutes) remains a terrific comedy about the demands of female friendship and the annoyance of romantic comedy clichés, complete with a stacked cast of Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne, and Elli Kemper; the first seven Fast & Furious movies have been added, which means approximately 18 hours of Vin Diesel’s wooden acting.

>> Missed last week’s BINGE-R? Click here to read about Amazon’s digital afterlife comedy Upload and Netflix’s new Hannah Gadsby special Douglas.

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>> Check the complete BINGE-R archive: 240 series reviewed here, 143 movies reviewed here, and 33 lists compiled here.