Down Under and across pond
These British and Aussie imports will fill the void created by Hollywood’s pandemic shutdown.
Critic Robert Lloyd profiles the best new TV imports. Maybe another ‘‘Fleabag’’?
You may recall that a little show called “Fleabag” killed at the Emmys last year, and you may further know that it was a British show carried to America by Amazon Prime. And you may have noticed another talked-about British series, “I May Destroy You,” which plays on HBO and which would seem likely to be similarly recognized when it becomes eligible next year.
The relationship of American viewers to British television is a cultural conversation running back at least to the 1960s, when “The Avengers” and “Secret Agent” and its quasi-sequel “The Prisoner” made it onto broadcast television, and “Elizabeth R,” “The Six Wives of Henry VIII,” “Brideshead Revisited,” “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and “Upstairs Downstairs” made it onto PBS.
Many are drawn to this content. The United Kingdom is a foreign land, exotic yet familiar, whose language we for the most part speak. England! Land of Robin Hood and Mary Poppins, of the kings and queens and Crowleys, whose aristocratic folderol we left behind and yet cannot quite give up. “The Crown,” “Victoria” — we sign on with almost unbecoming ardor.
We are seeing a lot more such imports now, across all platforms, not just from the U.K. but from its stepchildren, rough and tumble Australia and mild-mannered Canada. (That’s not even counting subscription services like AcornTV and BritBox, whose main business it is to bring those shows over.) It’s easier, after all, to acquire a series than to make one; for a new streamer, like HBO Max or NBCUniversal’s Peacock, it’s a way to come out of the gate with exclusive content. And for all American networks, their assembly lines stilled by the pandemic, it’s a way to fill holes with almost new, locally unseen foreign product.
The seven shows reviewed below, six from the U.K., three from Australia, are all new to American television this month. What they have in common is that they don’t let style stand in for content — they share a certain tradition of naturalism, in writing, acting and production. The last of these may have had as much to do historically with limited budgets as with aesthetic decisions, but in any event it’s produced work that looks less like Television and more like Life. It’s not even a mixed bag: All are recommended.
Fans of Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, erstwhile comperes on “The Great British Baking Show” and a team for nearly three decades, will find them put to surprising good use as the stars of Peacock’s “Hitmen,” in which they play lifelong friends who work as hired killers. How they arrived at this profession, which they approach with something short of relish, is never discussed nor is it much the point. They are just there, like Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon, and like them, one (Perkins) is a tortured thinker and the other (Giedroyc) a sweet idiot. Unlike Bill Hader’s “Barry” on HBO, it is not really a character study — it is more “Carry On Killing,” a jokey romp — which is not to say it is without psychology or character development. There is a bit of an arc through the episodic variations on a theme and a surprising lot of tense action for a sitcom and a pair better known for ambling about a tent full of amateur bakers, stealing tastes of cakes and biscuits.
In “Frayed,” airing on HBO Max, fabulously wealthy Samantha Cooper (creator Sarah Kendall) learns that her late husband, deceased under unsavory circumstances, has left her destitute. Dragging two confused teenagers, from whom she has concealed her actual past, she returns reluctantly to the industrial harbor town north of Sydney she left in a hurry 20 years earlier, moving in again with her properly wary mother (a terrific Kerry Armstrong) and angry brother (Ben Mingay) and encountering various old friends not unhappy to see her laid low. Set in the late 1980s — allowing for amusing hair and fashion and recurring “Dynasty” references — it’s a different sort of series than the similarly premised “Schitt’s Creek,” less whimsical or warm; the comedy rides on a bed of sorrow. Still, as in “Schitt’s Creek,” the viewer suspects that this is the best thing that could have happened to them, and is in no rush to see their fortunes, as measured by money, restored.
‘GofT’ plot points
Set in AD 43 during the first successful Roman invasion of Britain, Epix’s “Britannia” premiered in the U.K. in 2017. It’s a big, noisy, bloody, little-bit-sexy drama of antiquity, with an underplaying David Morrissey every inch an ancient Roman general, Zoe Wanamaker a fierce Celtic queen and an unrecognizable Mackenzie Crook as a Druid priest. Although it briefly seems we’re in for a well-integrated history lesson, it quickly becomes clear that, to quote the poet, we are in “days of old when magic ruled the air.” “Game of Thrones” will come to mind, and there are some similar plot points, but “Game of Thrones” hit so many plot points it would be work to avoid them. Awardwinning playwright Jez Butterworth — he also cowrote “Ford v Ferrari” — cocreated the series, with vivid characters, scenes that play well and the dialogue, which has a modern tang, pleasant on the ear and often funny (“My burning need for vengeance keeps me toasty”).
The premise of Peacock’s Australian import “Five Bedrooms” — five people, not all of whom know one another, buy a house together — is the sort of thing multicamera sitcoms are built on; it’s “Friends” without the intervening hallway. It’s fundamentally a comedy, but as a story of people who need people it’s more in tune with, if not as nakedly sentimental as, NBC’s “This Is Us.” Each character gets a turn at narrating; each seems superficially cut to type — posh lawyer lady; semi-closeted gay doctor; hunky construction worker; slightly creepy guy separated, but not emotionally, from his wife; lovelorn girl on whose shoulder he cries — but will prove more dimensional. Each is keeping a secret, and all are running from or toward the wrong thing, or running from the right thing, which gives them room for growth, and room to stumble.
Written by, starring and partly directed by O-T Fagbenle (“The Handmaid’s Tale”), “Maxxx,” streaming on Hulu, energetically traces the falls and rises of a former boy band singer looking to get back on top; he’s in the dog-paddling stage of his career, just staying afloat, although his self-image has not adjusted to his circumstances. “I thought you were dead,” says his old label head Don Wild (Christopher Meloni, happy to look awful). “I saw them dragging you out of the bottom of my swimming pool.” I’ve been working on the DL,” Maxxx replies, “because real Gs work in silence, like lasagna — think about it.” Maxxx’s profile having risen slightly after interrupting a funeral oration Kanye West style, Wild assigns nerdy music industry hopeful Tamzin (Pippa Bennett-Warner) to manage him; she is as reasonable as he is not. The series hurtles down some wellworn paths through showbusiness stories — art versus commerce and all — but originally framed by Maxxx’s now pathetic, now something-almost-likecharming character; the series holds out the possibility of change, even as it acknowledges the limits. It’s a carrot and stick approach that “Maxxx” manages quite well, though sometimes they just hit you with the stick. Also in the house: a whimsically adopted, now-teenage son, Amit (Alan Asaad), and Maxxx’s cousin and assistant Rose (Helen Monks), against whom he took out a restraining order.
The marvelous “Upright,” on Sundance Now, also features a musician who has never managed to grow up, though it is less grotesque and satirical and more warm and human. Created and directed in part by and starring Tim Minchin — a sort of show-business Jack of All Trades, Master of All, whose credits include the score for the Tony-nominated “Matilda: The Musical” — it is a road movie, and in most respects a comedy in that Minchin’s character, the ironically nicknamed “Lucky” Flynn, manages to climb out of the bad situations into which he steers or falls only to steer or fall into another, as he makes his way across the continent, hauling an old upright piano, to visit family he has not seen in years. His accidental companion on the trip, Meg (Milly Alcock, vulnerable beneath the bravado and thoroughly exceptional), is a teenage runaway with whose truck he collides minutes into the opening episode. The camera takes advantage of the wide expanses and arboreal silhouettes of the Australian outback without making it into a statement.
First, watch this
Just as affecting is Kayleigh Llewellyn’s “In My Skin,” a 2018 Cardiff-set coming-of-age story in five episodes, streaming on Hulu. The combination of its quietly luminous lead (Gabrielle Creevy, astonishingly good), the complexion of her best friends (James Wilbraham, gay; Poppy Lee Friar, wild), its high school setting and a lower-middle-class milieu, naturalistically represented, suggest “My SoCalled Life” as rebooted by Mike Leigh. Bethan (Creevy) has an alcoholic father (Rhodri Meilir) who is no use at all and a bipolar mother (a brilliant Jo Hartley) whose care often falls to her; her grandmother (Di Botcher) and a teacher (Alexandria Riley) are the two stable adults in her life, though only her grandmother knows what goes on in it. Some of those things are dire, but nothing feels exaggerated for effect; Llewellyn and director Lucy Forbes know just how much tragedy these situations can bear. Like Meg in “Upright,” Bethan tells lies in every direction to draw a protective circle around her and her home. There are attempts to raise her station, for which she is mocked by friend and foe alike, which lead to betrayals and triumphs. Each episode lasts only half an hour, though each is as rich and full of incident and energy as something twice as long. Creevy plays no false notes.
Start here in your watching, and work back.