MAKE SPACE!
IN YOUR SCHEDULE FOR THE OLD DUDES OF STREAMING
Should there be any uncertainty over exactly who will be steadying the helm of The Good Ship Television this year, the title of 71-year-old Jeff Bridges’ forthcoming series, The Old Man, should give you a clue. Currently in production for FX, Bridges plays Dan Chase, a Vermont retiree whose maverick past as a covert army intelligence officer in Libya comes back to haunt him in dramatic quickfetch-the-Berettas-from-the-overnight-bag style. The Dude he most definitely ain’t.
If we might be so crass as to borrow the loose narrative thrust of The Old Man to describe the current thrust of a TV trend — and we might be! — then it is fair to say that this year we can expect to see a lot of gnarly, seasoned dudes showing us exactly what they can do. To misquote The Big Lebowski’s Stranger: sometimes, there’s an old man… we won’t say hero, because what’s a hero? But sometimes there’s an old man.
Bridges’ return to television is a big deal — this is his first small-screen role for 13 years — but he will at least find himself in venerable company. In Dopesick, currently being filmed in Virginia for Hulu, and based on the book of the same name about America’s opioid crisis, 69-yearold Michael Keaton takes on the role of Dr Samuel Finnix, a physician who starts to realise quite how deep into the pockets of Big Pharma he and his fellow medical professionals really are. (Beetlejuice he most definitely, etc.)
So far so winter-of-our-discontenty, but the good news is that the funny old fellas are stepping up too. Steve Martin (75!) and Martin Short (71!) will be bringing their two-man stage show to London in September, but before then they’re making Only Murders in the Building, currently being shot in New York. The 10-episode comedy show for Hulu follows three amigos (nope, no Chevy; the third is Selena Gomez) with a passion for true crime, who suddenly find themselves wrapped up in a real one. Hilarity no doubt ensues!
At a spritely 59 years of age, Jared Harris is arguably too fresh-faced to qualify for this specious thematising, but the adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi epic Foundation in which he stars, coming soon to Apple TV+, looks so outrageously lavish that we feel justified in shoehorning in a mention. But the mac-daddy of granddaddies of course, is 74-year-old Brian Cox, soon to be returning as media magnate Logan Roy in series three of Succession. It might not have been clear who would be the break-out star from Jesse Armstrong’s darkly comic and unequivocally brilliant drama series when it began — Kendall and his jerkins? Shiv and her side-eye? Grubby little Roman? — but no, it is Cox’s Logan, prowling and growling around his pride (or are they his prey?) towards whom all eyes are drawn.
Perhaps you thought we were entering the televisual age of the Millennial, or the Gen Z-er, or the Gen Alphas — for yes, they’re on their way! But no. To abuse the Coens’ dialogue once again, sometimes there’s an old man… well, he’s the old man for his time and place. (Also: Gen Z-ers don’t watch telly.)