Oscar winner Paquin returns in ‘Flack’
Friday teems with new streaming options. “Flack” debuts. The British-American series was supposed to appear on Pop last March, and has staggered through several on-demand platforms before arriving on Amazon Prime.
Oscar-winning actress Anna Paquin stars as Robyn, an American transplant who moved to London with her sister Ruth (Genevieve Angelson) to escape from family issues back home. An unflappable publicist for a firm specializing in celebrities on the verge of career implosion, Robyn’s cool demeanor barely disguises her emotional turmoil.
Her firm is populated by mean-spirited barracudas. Both her boss Caroline (Sophie Okonedo) and best friend and colleague Eve (Lydia Wilson) spout brittle dismissive insults, each more quotable and dreadful than the last. They seem to be written more as meme-generators than characters. Melody (Rebecca Benson), the unpaid intern, appears to be the only human being in proximity and she serves as the butt of Eve’s caustic humor.
Robyn is clearly meant to be a difficult character of the Don Draper mold. But “Mad Men” had sympathetic characters and moments of dark humor. This inside-the-sausage-factory-of-publicity series might be easier to take if there was anybody to care about.
› Apple TV+ imports the Israeli series “Losing Alice.” Ayelet Zurer stars in the title role as a director, once known for provocative and erotic fare, who has since settled into motherhood, domestic bliss and a sporadic professional life directing commercials and mending other filmmaker’s scripts. Her complacency is challenged when she encounters Sophie (Lihi Kornowski), a young aspiring filmmaker whose boundary-pushing script has attracted a bidding war and the attention of Alice’s husband, David (Gal Toren), a movie sex symbol entering middle age.
Alice’s sense of self begins to evaporate as she begins to obsess about Sophie as a symbol of lost youth, desire and ambition.
This is the latest offering to represent the promise and pitfalls of streaming TV. Doled out in slow-moving 45-minute episodes, “Alice” turns what might have been a compelling and dreamlike 90-minute arthouse film into a rather long slog.
› Actor and musician John Lurie created and scored “Painting With John” (11 p.m., HBO, TV-MA), a meditation on art and life and everything in between that is every bit as eccentric as its creator.
The title is a nod to “Fishing With John,” a cult TV series from the late ’90s that followed Lurie and his hipster pals (Tom Waits, Jim Jarmusch and Dennis Hopper) on fishing trips all over the world. For the most part, this new effort is a solo venture, asking us to watch Lurie as he works his brush and occasionally erupts in anecdotes and observations. Like Lurie’s “difficult” jazz score, “Painting” is not for everybody.