GOING NOWHERE
While Netflix’s new travelogue is hardly a world-beater, Apple TV+ fails to hit the right notes, says Ed Cumming
Down to Earth with Zac Efron (Netflix) Little Voice (Apple TV+)
“It’s planet Earth and I’m still on it, chilling,” says Zac Efron at the start of his new Netflix eco-travel show, Down to Earth with Zac Efron, so we can’t say we haven’t been warned about the tone of what will follow.
As televised peregrinations go, this will not be on a level with Parts Unknown, or Simon Reeve, or Top Gear.
Efron, who made his name as the wax-chested hunk in Disney’s High School Musical, has evolved into a 32year-old hairy hunk, complete with hipster beard, plaid shirts and a beanie perched atop his chiselled jaw. With maturity, he has also acquired a slight sadness around the eyes. If his previous aesthetic was “electrified Ken doll”, the new look is more “bewildered coffee shop owner”. He is joined by his mate, the author and “wellness expert” Darin Olien, brought along to lend a bit of fraternal jocularity to Zac’s grand tour.
We never learn why Efron has been chosen for this task. He doesn’t seem to have any particular interest in the environment, or food, and is not a natural travel presenter. Although he’s relentlessly positive, and has obviously spent plenty of time in front of a camera, he never expresses curiosity beyond the most simplistic admiration. Presumably, Netflix hopes that he still has enough clout with younger millennials and Gen Z’ers that they’ll tune in out of respect for his oeuvre. There must be a narrow band of people who care enough about Efron to tune in, but not enough about the environment to find this hopelessly simplistic.
Olien’s not much better. He’s older than his co-presenter and obviously can’t believe his luck at being asked along for the ride. He tags along behind like an older brother, doing Lord of the Rings and Star Wars voices and contributing no insight or expertise, except for the odd crack at his selective veganism.
In the first episode, the bros hump around Iceland, a haven for sustainability experts thanks to its abundant geothermal and hydroelectric power plants. From high school musical to pre-school geography. Few nations are as photogenic, and it’s all shot with Netflix’s typical high-definition gloss, with abundant drone shots of gorgeous volcanic panoramas. Efron and Olien bake bread in thermal sands, swim in the Blue Lagoon, have an “ice and fire” massage, make chocolate, eat reindeer tartare at the Michelin-starred Dill, and do various other Iceland 101 tourist activities. “Wow,” they say. “Gnarly.” “Bigtime.” “Woah.” “Dude.” “Nailed it.” “Holy s***.” “Rad.” “Wild.” “This is one of four geothermal plants in Iceland,” says Olien, as they pull into the car park. “Sick,” Efron replies.
Efron reveals that his father works as an engineer at a nuclear power station, before asking a startled-looking employee how a turbine works. It’s possible this is faux-naivety, an artistic device to help the audience join him on his voyage of discovery, but I’m not convinced. Later, he starts talking about the health benefits of “negative ions”, for viewers who prefer inane travelogue to come with a side of quackery.
“Electricity is easy to take for granted,” he muses, after a trip to a hydroelectric plant. “But this place gives me much greater appreciation for what makes electricity.” I wonder if the experience of filming Down to Earth has given him a greater appreciation for what makes decent television.
Brittany O’Grady stars in ‘Little Voice’
(Apple TV+)
While Zac Efron is worrying about the realities of environment and infrastructure, over on Apple TV+ they are retreating into dreamworld. On the evidence of the new streaming service’s few months of programming, Apple is better at making phones than curating television. The only hit so far has been the Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell vehicle The Morning Show, and even that divided opinion. Its dodgy first few months have been quite reassuring, in a way. Even with that much money and power, it’s still hard to pick winners.
The platform’s latest effort is Little Voice, created by Jessie Nelson and Sara Bareilles, the duo behind the musical version of Waitress, and exec-produced by JJ Abrams, because he exec-produces everything. There is a passing resemblance to the 1998 Jane Horrocks film of the same name about a young female singer, although no official connection as far as I can tell.
Bess (Brittany O’Grady) is a waitress and dog-walker in a twinkling version of New York where you suspect nothing truly bad could ever happen. She moonlights as a cover singer and music teacher, and dreams of playing her own material, which she practises in a storage unit when she has a free moment between her four jobs. But Bess is traumatised by a previous experience, when some drunk men booed her offstage, and can’t get it together to perform. As she is constantly told by her colleagues, friends and family, she will need more hustle than that if she’s going to make it in such a cutthroat industry. And if she’s not going to bother, then she ought to do everyone a favour and stop moping around the place feeling sorry for herself.
In the first episode, the perfect opportunity appears when another singer storms out of Bess’s bar. But after warbling through a few lines of her own song, she panics and plays a cover instead. It’s a convenient metaphor for the series, which never tries something original when a cliché will do instead. Bess has a beloved autistic brother (Kevin Valdez), a South Asian roommate (Shalini Bathina) whose parents are obsessed with her finding a husband, and a tentative love interest in the form of Ethan (Sean Teale), who is working on a film in the next-door unit. Everywhere Bess looks she sees people expressing themselves musically: a cellist playing Bach in the park; a flamboyant dreadlocked drummer; singers and mariachi bands.
O’Grady does what she can with a role that requires her to be gifted but wet, which is not an especially likeable combo. There’s a place for earnest and well-meaning fairytales. Little Voice could be wholesome good fun, a kind of frictionless 2020 update of Coyote Ugly, were it not for one key weakness: the songs. Great musical TV needs tunes we want to hear. But Bess’s efforts are weedy little numbers, the kind of thing you hear in the corner of a quiet bar rather than indicators of misunderstood genius. In television, as in music, not every hopeful has what it takes.