Watch TV with Paul Flynn
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED by the talented, Oscar-winning Julie Delpy, On The Verge follows the domestic life of celebrated French chef Justine (Delpy), hanging on to her reputation, family and friendship group in the fashionable suburbs of LA. Justine is trying to write a book, weaving her culinary skills through life experiences. Her monstrous boss Jerry (Giovanni Ribisi) expects something cheerful, uplifting and European. The result is less Julia Childs, more Kitchen Nightmares as Justine is consumed by life’s glaring disappointments as she attempts to get them on paper.
Delpy’s work is a sophisticated meditation on hanging on to being chic in middle-age. She is not here to judge, only to observe the brief moments for respite and humour. Her characterisation of Justine – beleaguered but not ruined by life – is sweetly understated.
Justine’s husband is an irritating, underachieving man-child who’ll only speak to her in French. Her friendship group comprise Anne (Showgirls’ fabulous Elisabeth Shue), a 24-hour stoner with a whimsical online fashion business and a child expressing gender issues; Yasmin (Sarah Jones), a percolating mess of identity crises, who lies to her family and snoops on her neighbours; and Ell (Alexia Landeau), in denial about a series of mounting money problems. In the first episode, the four riff on whether Ell is now a prostitute, after Jerry gives her a blank cheque during a clumsy bout of passenger-seat oral sex one night. It’s a bold start to a series that wears its frankness lightly, a perfunctory symptom of its earthier subject matter.
The ensemble pieces are brilliant. A disastrous dinner party interrupted by everyone’s useless partners, a dog reported to Animal Cruelty, an illness that throws work into disarray. Delpy is skilled at exposing then cauterising the lies we fool ourselves with to get by. When Jerry harangues Justine about upping her social media presence, she proudly tells him, ‘I’m on Facebook,’ to a kitchenful of horrified Millennial staff.
I adored On The Verge. Justine, Ann, Ell and Yasmin are far a perfect new set of telly friends to hang out with – their appeal lies in their entirely human flaws.
Available on Netflix now