Ten Percent: the British remake of Call My Agent!
I’d been “dreading” the remake of Call My Agent!, the cult French comedy set in a talent agency in Paris, said Barbara Ellen in The Observer. “How could it be as funny, twisted and delicious” as the original? Thankfully, Amazon Prime’s Ten Percent is “a beautifully crafted” joy. We are now in an agency in Soho, presided over by Jim Broadbent and Jack Davenport. The plot lines echo those in the French series, and involve similar celebrity cameos – from the likes of Dominic West, Helena Bonham Carter and David Harewood – but the show develops its own distinctly British flavour.
Someone’s clearly thrown a lot of money at this remake, but it has a big flaw, said Camilla Long in The Sunday Times: “It’s not very funny.” In fact “it is the opposite of funny”. Davenport isn’t funny, while Lydia Leonard, “a serious actress”, struggles to step into the shoes of Camille Cottin. Even the star cameos aren’t funny: instead of sending themselves up, the celebs come across as “normal and friendly”. The script was written by John Morton, the man who created W1A, which means “lots of nibbling little rejoinders in tense eyebally meetings where secretaries will cut people dead just by saying ‘Yup’“. I felt I was “drowning in a blizzard of corporate manners”. I really enjoyed the series, said Rebecca Nicholson in The Guardian. The agents are too nice, and it could have done with more “spiky humour”; but I still hoovered up all eight episodes “with gusto”. Is there any point to this remake? “Not really.” But was I invested by the end? “I was.”