FX on Hulu’s ‘A Teacher’ is a big bore
“A Teacher” debuts on FX on Hulu. Kate Mara (“House of Cards”) stars in the title role. She’s Claire, a new English teacher at Westerbrook, a Texas high school seemingly dominated by its jock culture. Trying to get this crowd worked up for Dylan Thomas poems is a tall order for Claire, who is long-married to her highschool sweetheart, Matt (Ashley Zukerman), a nice enough guy who sleeps in torn T-shirts but no longer appears to float her boat.
Things change when Claire agrees to tutor Eric Walker (Nick Robinson), a striving student who needs to increase his SAT scores to earn a scholarship.
We all know where this is going, and “Teacher” is supposed to spell out the motivations behind an older woman’s predatory relationship with a teen.
Unfortunately, the students at Westerbrook all seem to be 17-goingon-35 and don’t seem much younger than Claire. And the notion of a boy’s innocence being trampled upon is undercut by the frat-boy house party shenanigans of Eric’s entourage.
Trouble from the getgo, Claire is seen shoplifting lipstick for no apparent reason. We all know that Claire’s desires are dangerous and her actions unforgivable. Why’d they have to make her so boring?
The most interesting aspect of this miniseries is that its episodes unfold in half-hour dollops. Maybe they knew that a solid hour with Claire would be too much to endure.
› Christmas addicts and fans of gushing YA romance novels may rejoice. Others may find Netflix’s miniseries “Dash & Lily” worthy of the hate-watching binge of the year. An adaptation of the novel “Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares” by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn, “Dash” begins with a breathy voiceover from Lily (Midori Francis), who has tucked her secret notebook onto a shelf at Manhattan’s fabled Strand bookstore. She spends the first few moments of the show gushing over the romance of New York at Christmas. It all sounds like a commercial for instant coffee.
Then we hear, also in voiceover, from Dash (Austin Abrams, “The
Walking Dead”), a handsome young man embittered by the departure of his girlfriend and his apparent estrangement from his posh parents. If Lily’s voice breathily evokes the aspirational aspect of Taster’s Choice, he’s “Mr. Edgy,” all too ready to affect a Scroogelike dismissal of the holidays, love and life in general. This makes him a sucker for the romantic malarky to come.
It’s hardly a spoiler to reveal that he stumbles upon Lily’s notebook, which sends him on a literary scavenger hunt through a Hallmark version of Manhattan. This takes him past persnickety book clerks while dodging Christmas carolers and canoodling tourists entranced by the city’s Yuletide twinkle.
Viewers who thought “Emily in Paris” presented a desecration of that city will have their knives out for “Dash & Lily” and its take on New York.
The real Strand bookstore recently sent out an SOS to its faithful, warning of its imminent bankruptcy due to COVID-related disruptions. Thousands responded with book orders. After seeing how the Strand agreed to lend its image to this insipid tripe, it may ask for its money back!