It’s a turn up for the books
Calum Henderson on Idris’ Elba’s unlikely new vehicle
When they wrote the pilot episode of This Is Us, they needed to invent a fake sitcom so crushingly idiotic that we’d be able to empathise with its star actor when he had an on-set existential meltdown. What they came up with was The Manny, a long-running and inexplicably popular comedy about a handsome male nanny. Remember how we all laughed and thought: there could never be a real sitcom this stupid.
Fast forward to 2019, and guess what? The Manny exists for real now.
Well, sort of. New Netflix series Turn Up Charlie isn’t quite as moronic, though its basic premise is more or less identical. Here, Idris Elba plays a one-hit wonder London DJ who falls into a job as the unlikely caregiver of his old schoolfriend’s menacing 11-year-old daughter.
First of all, yes, Idris Elba. Stringer Bell from The Wire, DCI John Luther from Luther, Heimdall in all those Marvel movies. People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive for 2018, Idris Elba.
No one is arguing that title, are they? I think a big part of what makes him the sexiest man alive, apart from the obvious devastating good looks, is that he clearly has the confidence to trust and follow his own heart. And what his heart seems to want more than anything else at the moment is to make a broad and sentimental TV comedy, one in which he gets to play against type as an absolute goose.
The first episode of Turn Up Charlie is dedicated to establishing just how much of a goose old Charlie really is. We are led to understand that he was once quite cool, DJed Ibiza many moons ago, but has now been reduced to spinning disco hits at friends’ weddings. He thinks his ship’s come in when he bumps into a famous old mate and his superstar DJ wife, but instead of begging him to guest on a track they just want him to make sure their problem child doesn’t burn down the studio.
Idris is having so much fun with it, you can tell. It’s almost enough to forgive the fact that he’s just not a very good comedy actor. On a different show he could probably get away with it, but unfortunately this one hasn’t got much else going for it.
With the exception of Guz Khan (whose own series Man Like Mobeen, also on Netflix, is probably a better bet) as his out-of-it mate, the rest of the cast do little to elevate Elba or his show, and the writing has the unmistakable staleness of an average mid-2000s movie that’s now on Netflix for some reason (and you’re watching anyway because it’s got Josh Hartnett in it).
Still, you have to admire anyone who’s willing to give their all doing something they enjoy even though they’re not that good at it, don’t you? That’s what I try to tell myself when I play soccer or do karaoke, anyway.