High Fidelity

Neon, from Monday

Rewatching the movie version of High Fidelity, one thing becomes painfully clear: John Cusack’s character is nowhere near as cool as I thought he was 20 years ago. Whereas once I saw him as a cinematic representation of my dream life (work in a record store, have at least two friends who know who Belle and Sebastian are), now I saw him for what Nick Hornby probably intended him to be all along: an embarrassingly emotionally immature manchild.

The past two decades have not been kind to white men with strongly-held opinions about pop music. High Fidelity, both the novel and the movie, seem increasingly "of their time" – that time being the late-1990s. So what are they doing, adapting it into a new TV series?

It’s such a bad idea that it ends up working. A big part of what makes it work is swapping out John Cusack for Zoe Kravitz, who plays a more likeable, if no less curmudgeonly version of Rob. She also seems to have taken the lease on Cusack’s apartment from the movie, landline telephone and all.

While some things — whole scenes, almost — are exactly the same as the book and the film, others have been updated to nudge High Fidelity into the 21st century. The staff at Championship Vinyl now bring playlists to work, not mixtapes. Where Jack Black (easily the best thing about the film) put on Walking On Sunshine, Da’Vine Joy Randolph (an excellent alternative) puts on Come On Eileen. The music references have been updated, if only slightly. “All white guys love Weezer,” Rob accurately observes in the first episode.

There are enough callbacks to the original book and movie to keep original fans happy, but enough is different to save the show from embarrassing itself in the current climate. Maybe I’ll look back in 20 years and cringe, but Zoe Kravitz’s High Fidelity seems pretty cool.