Mumbling along with life in Flatbush
★★★✩✩
HDan and Kevin mumble and grumble and stumble along, burdened by their circumstances
OW MANY laughs are prerequisite to classifying a TV show as comedy? Despite its home on Sky Comedy, I’d politely suggest more than in Flatbush Misdemeanors. But then that’s what the term ‘comedy drama’ was invented for. Even if the definition of drama is also being stretched here. Which isn’t to say, laughs or not, drama or not, this series still isn’t enjoyable, because it is.
Comparisons have been made to Broad City; two struggling friends in New York, flitting about from one mishap to the next. And despite the sex of their respective leads, there are certainly other connections. You’re got co-stars with stand-up comedy backgrounds, cocreating and co-writing, remaking their work from what was originally a web-series. You’ve also got the Semitic influence, or at least half of it here, with Dan Perlman playing Dan Joseph. Yet it’s in how they’re different, that you can best decide if this show is for you.
First is the manner by which the protagonists handle what life throws at them. In Broad City the Jewish lionesses fight back, they go on the attack, they wrestle with and even instigate their trials. And they do it with relish and joy, the results being properly laugh out loud funny. They’re broads dominating their city. Whereas, in Flatbush, childhood friends Dan and Kev, played by Kevin Iso, are more the victims of the area’s misdemeanours.
As Dan teaches grown teens in the public education system, and Kevin delivers food while waiting for his big break as a fine artist, they both mumble and grumble and stumble along, burdened by their circumstances, half-heartedly fighting back in the misguided hope the worst won’t happen. The comedy that ensues is more grounded, dry and subtle, generating wry smiles rather than laughter.
Passive characters lend themselves to passive comedy. This is an updated version of the Coen Brother’s A Serious Man, itself an update of the Book of Job. That the two funniest characters, drug dealer Drew, portrayed by The Wire alumnus Hassan Johnson, and Dan’s Black father-in-law Kareem, have no problem taking charge of their destinies, highlights how the understated Dan and Kev are in danger of keeping the comedy underwhelming.
Then there’s the difference in the respective roles played by the city itself. Far from playing a supporting role, as you can guess from its title, the Flatbush region of Brooklyn is promoted to one of the principal characters, the narrative predominantly deriving from living in this specific time and place. In that way a closer comparison would be Donald Glover’s excellent Atlanta, with much of the reward coming from their seemingly authentic portrayals of a majority African American population and what offerings of insight can be gained into those communities.
There is amusement transposing someone like that Dan into this setting, with his anxiety pills and nebbish manner being such an identifiably Woody Allenesque stereotype of a Jewish man, that if the location was shifted to the Upper West Side this could be renamed Crimes and Misdemeanors. All these comparisons in attempting to get to the nub of this show, are actually indicative of just how unquantifiable it is. Essentially it’s something new. There is an independent film genre called Mumblecore that contains many of the elements on display in Flatbush. I’d suggest that makes this a Mumblecom.