Binge-r #285: Killing It + Roar
The Big Squeeze: Claudia O’Doherty (Jillian) and Craig Robinson (Craig) in Killing It
KILLING IT S1
Streaming Service: Stan
Availability: All 10 episodes now streaming
Set in 2016 Florida, so the egregiousness feels like the norm, Killing It is about being squeezed to death, whether it’s by the snakes the main characters hunt for their bounty or the capitalist system that has them so hungry for wealth that they’re readily living in poverty. It’s both madcap and mordant, and most times you think you have the tone locked down it doubles back on you – it stretches the half hour comedy out, so that it levitates. Come for the madcap predicaments, stay for the social critique, as security guard Craig Foster (Craig Robinson) tries to find the $20,000 necessary to buy the land required for his latest entrepreneurial scheme. A believer in the American Dream – his younger bother, Isaiah (Rell Battles), chooses to celebrate American exceptionalism with criminal ventures – Craig keeps digging a deeper hole for himself. By the third episode he’s living in a 24-hour gym.
With banks refusing to lend money to a Black man, Craig finds unlikely inspiration in his Australian Uber driver, Jillian (Claudia O’Doherty), whose web of tenuous jobs includes hunting Burmese Pythons, an invasive species the state pays a bounty for (by length!) O’Doherty is a master of irrational optimism, filled with such buoyant positivity that it takes you a while to see her everyday grifts and delusional overreach. “Grave-robbing is a life hack,” she insists, and the second episode is an O’Doherty tour-de-force. Her Jillian is also a top foil for Robinson, both physically and emotionally – the comedy veteran usually deploys a cynical disdain, but his Craig has a hunger for success that is almost tender. He dreams about being wealthy, but also wants to win back his ex-wife, Camille (Stephanie Nogueras).
Co-creator Dan Goor was central to both Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and this feels like a continuation of that lineage in terms of rapid-fire punchlines and comic escalation. But it also has a weirder, sharper edge – If Parks and Recreation was a paean to community bonds, Killing It is about the non-stop race to join the 1% and damn the rest. The third episode revolves around an entrepreneur’s convention featuring Craig’s business idol, but it also features a snarling millionaire (Tim Heidecker) and his family – 10-year-old daughter included! – who berate the ordinary people to excite the audience. That Craig and Jillian move through this world but aren’t tainted by it is testament to the writing’s thoughtfulness, while the snake hunting, complete with acutely sketched rivals, provides run off the rails humour. Shedding numerous skins, this series is a welcome surprise.
Picture This: Nicole Kidman (Robin) in Roar
ROAR S1
Streaming Service: Apple TV+
Availability: All eight episodes now streaming
By their nature anthology series are hit and miss, but the success rate is thankfully strong enough in Apple TV+’s bittersweet exploration of how women struggle with the limitations placed upon them. It helps that the source material is the 2018 short story collection of the same name by the Irish novelist Cecilia Ahern – it gives the adaptations by Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch, the creators of Netflix’s Glow [season one review here], a unifying tone laced with straight-faced absurdism and uncomfortable recriminations. The otherworldly flourishes can sometimes be peripheral, such as Nicole Kidman’s Aussie hairdresser – she eats Cheezels and sings along to Midnight Oil – chewing on photographs to revisit her childhood memories in The Woman Who Ate Photographs, but in that instance it doesn’t matter because when Robin visits her mother, who has signs of dementia, the door is opened by Judy Davis.
The best episodes jolt reality, flex the ludicrous, and bend your reading of the story back on you. Alison Brie is a self-deprecating guide in The Woman Who Solved Her Own Murder, playing a frustrated spirit watching the police investigation of her murder go wrong and comically critiquing the Dead Girl crime drama genre, while Betty Gilpin is literally a trophy wife in The Woman Who Was Kept on a Shelf. My favourite? Undoubtedly The Woman Who Was Fed by a Duck, where the always terrific Merritt Wever plays a 30something single who discovers her best dating option is a duck – voiced by Justin Kirk – who initially satisfies, well, all her needs but has some familiar male issues. The concept is both daft and daring, repeatedly finding another level where you didn’t imagine one possible but never losing track of the underlying truth. It ends with less than a roar, but you hear it.
>> New Seasons: It’s a daunting proposition, but Netflix has a second season of Natasha Lyonne’s metaphysical masterpiece Russian Doll – the first season was essential viewing [season one review here], while SBS on Demand has a new instalment of the Norwegian time travel crime procedural Beforeigners [season one review here].
>> Last Issue: Click here to catch up on Amazon’s sci-fi western Outer Range and Netflix’s tawdry British crime drama Anatomy of a Scandal.
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