Tag: Paramount+

Yellowjackets (2021)

Where to find it: Paramount+ on Amazon
Length: Twenty nine 50-minute episodes
Synopsis: Mystery about a plane crash
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: drama and mystery (some of it good), acting, music
What I don’t like about it: sometimes resembles Lost, often unbelievable, confusing start

Review:
Showtime’s latest drama hit is crafted with a confident coolness and features mysteries and characters that will get their hooks in you if you give them chance, but it remains to be seen whether that is worthwhile. As is common these days, we see two timelines at once: the distant past of the late 90s where a girls’ soccer team suffer a plane crash in the famously-filmable woods of Vancouver, and the present where four of the survivors try to get on with their lives despite great trauma. The present timeline provides some great roles for actors “of a certain age” – including the always-welcome Melanie Lynskey and creepily quirky Christina Ricci – but it’s the past timeline that proves most interesting. Mystery builds in an intriguing way as we get to know characters in the past who are not represented in the present (will they die or be revealed next season?) and the appeal is carefully constructed towards the archetypal husband-and-wife: gore for him, relationship drama for her etc.

Overall, it’s good but not great and could go either way before it’s done. They have an eye for a great visual but don’t linger, the plot is intriguing but ultimately not that interesting and the acting is good but may be worth nothing more than a few Emmys if they don’t pull it together.

UPDATE AFTER THREE SEASONS: It never has the firmest grip on where it’s going but I have a lot of fun with Yellowjackets. They have a unique vibe and a great theme song. It’s like the better bits of Lost combined with a twisted tale of trauma-bonded female friendship. Often makes me gasp and comment snarkily to the television and I recommend it despite its flaws.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): sex, violence and horror, drugs, animal killing, psychosis, cannibalism

The Offer (2022)

Where to find it: Paramount+ on Amazon Prime
Length: Ten 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: Tall tales about the making of The Godfather
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: the acting, sometimes the writing
What I don’t like about it: ten hours?! it’s not fuckin’ Shoah…

Review:
It must be hard to justify having your own streaming service when your only bankable franchises are Star Trek and Spongebob Squarepants, so Paramount turn to making movies about Paramount making movies. Godfather producer Al Ruddy has been telling his version of events surrounding the making of that film and, like any Hollywood producer, he doesn’t let the truth ruin a good yarn. All the more lurid elements of his story – Frank Sinatra having Mickey Cohen try to kill him, Joe Colombo having him over for homemade dinner on the eve of his public shooting, his debt to Joe Gallo being called off last-minute by Gallo’s murder – involve people too dead to sue for defamation, while those still living are kept conveniently unaware of these elements by the selectively-truthful Ruddy.

The acting steals the show in this one with Miles Teller channelling Tony Curtis in the lead role to great effect. The actors get lost in their impressions of real-life counterparts; their Coppola, Pacino, Brando and Robert Evans are all remarkable and really help to generate interest in this ultimately uninteresting series. The writing is sometimes good, especially when taking advantage of parallels between scenes in The Godfather and circumstances supposedly involved in making it, and sometimes risibly overwrought “we don’t make movies, we make magic!” stuff.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): drugs, violence

I Love That For You (2022)

Where to find it: Paramount+
Length: Eight 30-minute episodes
Synopsis: A young woman raised on QVC dreams of selling cheap trinkets
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: Vanessa Bayer, Jenifer Lewis, great character work, satire/ exposé of home shopping and sales work
What I don’t like about it: it’s not unmissable, the characters are good individually but rarely click together into any kind of dynamic

Review:
The premise of this one didn’t interest me much but the pilot did. We’re introduced to a young girl who has clearly been a hospital inpatient for some time, the scene is dark and grey but she is captivated by a dull light from the corner of the room: the falsely happy, friendly and elegant world of a home shopping network. Being too young to understand the artifice, she idolises the one happy presence in her small, sad world. Smash cut to her as a sheltered young woman, retaining many childlike qualities and a strong desire to not be “the cancer girl” anymore, she auditions for a role as a sales-host at the network which she spent so many hours watching. She clearly has a talent – her bubbly, enthusiastic and friendly nature make her a natural fit for the role – but she anxiously stumbles over her words a lot. Nonetheless she is hired and excitedly goes to spend her first day in the TV world of her childhood, only to find that behind the scenes it’s all business and bitchy backbiting. We see her thrown for a loop for the rest of the pilot as her naïveté is shattered in real-time and at the end, she makes a really bad decision that creates interest for future episodes.

This is clearly very well-informed by creator/writer/star Vanessa Bayer, who herself went from having childhood leukemia to being in showbusiness and that lends a lot of heart to a show that otherwise would feel tacky and exploitative. It’s not the funniest comedy on modern TV/streaming but in an age when comedy shows are mixing a lot with drama, it’s not the worst balance and is even good for a laugh-out-loud moment an episode. It’s getting quite unfavourable reviews which I think is undeserved and likely due to the show’s rather feminine appeal.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): cancer comes up a lot, some ableist slurs