Binge-r #247: Halt and Catch Fire + Physical
Through the Looking Glass: Scoot McNairy (Gordon), Mackenzie Davis (Cameron), and Lee Pace (Joe) in Halt and Catch Fire
HALT AND CATCH FIRE S1-4
Streaming Service: SBS on Demand
Availability: All episodes now streaming
SBS on Demand continues its habit of securing the secondary rights to impressive series by putting up all four seasons of this American period drama, which spans the arrival of the personal computer to the birth of internet. Airing on cable television between 2014 and 2017, Halt and Catch Fire remains – with the qualifier of early episodes that take time to fully click – one of the most intriguing shows of the last decade. Creators Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rogers set on path a story about how hard it is to make something that is merely good: an idea, a new device, and a relationship all require struggle to get even close to sustaining something that actually matters. You can have hope, but it’s easily dashed.
At the show’s start in 1983 the focus is charismatic, uncompromising executive Joe McMillan (Lee Pace), who is the Don Draper of floppy drives and operating systems, but as magnetic as Pace’s portrayal gets, the show’s ultimate focus is the creative partnership between a gifted young programmer, Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis), and a computer engineer, Donna Clark (Kerry Bishe), who is slowly but surely drawn into the plot’s orbit through her marriage to Gordon (Scott McNairy), a computer engineer who becomes Joe’s first accomplice. There are 40 episodes, which is pretty much what winter requires, and there’s a reason this underseen series kept making best of lists every year it was on.
Sweat it Out: Rose Byrne (Sheila Rubin) in Physical
PHYSICAL S1 (Apple TV+, all 10 episodes now streaming): An acerbic black comedy about building a better version of yourself, no matter the risks, Apple’s new series is headlined by an exemplary performance by Rose Byrne. She plays Sheila Rubin, a one-time 1960’s college radical existing in 1981 San Diego at the end of her tether. Disgusted by her self-obsessed husband and finding satisfaction in bulimic rituals, Sheila sees the light when she discovers aerobics. Announced by her brutal interior monologue – “you’re as shallow as a kiddie pool” is as nice as it gets – Sheila starts to explore her options, finding self-determination in teaching classes and embracing the new Ronald Reagan-inspired decade of getting rich. The show is scathing and sometimes bleak, but there’s also a fine line in dry farce and a sustained note of the fantastical to the blithely brief half hour episodes. It’s richer in concept and more deranged in execution than what you see at first glance.
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
New on Netflix: Having rewatched Christopher Nolan’s Tenet (2020, 150 minutes) I can admire the brain-bending concept – the future is at war with the present, reversing how objects and people move through time – but the plot and logic of action scenes remain opaque, despite the efforts of John David Washington and Robert Pattinson as spies and an underused Elizabeth Debicki as the woman whose husband may be trying to end the world.
New on Stan: Logan Lucky (2017, 119 minutes) is not Steven Soderbergh’s best heist film, but a cast of Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Riley Keough, and Daniel Craig (having a great time) give it plenty of zing; Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (2000, 102 minutes) remains a landmark American independent feature starring Jennifer Connelly and Jared Leto, with a prodigious technical ambition and increasingly nightmarish portrayal of America as a nation driven by addiction.
New on SBS on Demand: Every Jonathan Glazer film is a distinct experience, none more so than Under the Skin (2014, 104 minutes), the study of an alien – played with otherworldly detachment by Scarlett Johansson – who prowls Scotland harvesting male admirers before an existential crisis takes hold that reveals a mix of elemental horror, documentary aesthetic, and gender commentary that is memorably complete.
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