Jesse Eisenberg doesn’t seem old enough to be playing “the dad”, let alone “the divorced dad”, but that’s just the way life goes. The 39-year-old actor, who made his name as “the son” in movies like The Squid & The Whale (which might as well have been the prequel to this series) is now divorced dad Toby Fleishman, and he is in trouble.
Well, we say trouble, but not in a way that represents any real or mortal danger. Maybe “in turmoil”, or some other phrase that conveys a state of constantly staring out the window of your expensive yet unimpressive bachelor apartment, wondering how your life ended up the way it did, would be more accurate, but it would make for a far less appealing title.
He’s getting ready to go to work as a liver doctor when his ex-wife calls and says by the way the kids are at yours, I dropped them off a day early because I got a spot in some kind of exclusive yoga camp. This is most inconvenient because he has several slightly depressing dating app hook-ups to rearrange. But when Rachel (Claire Danes) – a ruthlessly career-driven talent agent with a blunt bob to match her manner – fails to show up to pick up the kids at the arranged time, and is unreachable through all the usual channels, Toby is left with not just childcare arrangements but also a missing persons case to solve.
Taffy Brodesser-Akner, who wrote the 2019 novel on which this series is based, also adapted the majority of the screenplay – sometimes, as in the narration of Toby’s wry, acerbic old friend Libby (Lizzy Caplan), pretty much word-for-word. It’s a faithful adaptation of the book, in other words, and in this case, it works – if you hadn’t got around to reading it yet, the good news is now maybe you don’t have to.
A TV reboot of the 1990s’ ookiest, kookiest film franchise, directed by the 90s’ ookiest, kookiest director – honestly, how was The Addams Family not a Tim Burton movie? (Turns out he was meant to but passed on it to make Batman Returns instead.) Jenna Ortega (also in the recent Scream reboot) fills Christina Ricci’s black shoes and even blacker sense of humour for this series, which as well as being a typically Gothic Tim Burton joint is also very much in Netflix’s patented Riverdale / Chilling Adventures of Sabrina-style of modern teen reboots of mid-century comic book IP – that is to say, this time Wednesday Addams has a dark mystery to solve.
The TV reboots of old movie franchises are coming thick and fast this week – remember Bumper from Pitch Perfect? No? He was the smug, annoying leader of the rival, boys’ a capella group in the movies ... anyway, he has his own spinoff series now. Ten years on from the first Pitch Perfect, Adam Devine’s character is working as a security guard, but when one of his old songs unexpectedly goes big in Germany he heads to Berlin to pursue the pop stardom that somehow evaded him despite being in a successful college a capella group. None of the other core Pitch Perfect cast is in this, but Sarah Hyland (Modern Family) and Jameela Jamil (The Good Place) are.
Pitch Perfect: Bumper In Berlin. Photo / Julia Terjung/Peacock
Welcome to Chippendales (Disney+)
It probably comes as no surprise that the story of Chippendales, the famous 1980s all-male striptease revue, is a wild one. How wild? They’ve just adapted the hit podcast series about it into a TV drama. Kumail Nanjiani is the star of the show as Steve Banerjee, the Indian-born entrepreneur who bought a failing Los Angeles nightclub (the evocatively named “Destiny II”) in the 1970s and turned it into the hottest ticket in town with the help of some oiled-up hunks of spunk. The dramatic rise of Chippendales is followed, naturally, by an even more dramatic fall as the classic 80s sleaze combo of money, drugs and sex gets the better of everybody involved.
Movie of the Week: See How They Run (Disney+, Neon)
Christmas comes exactly two days early this year with Glass Onion, the new Knives Out movie, arriving on Netflix on December 23. If you need something to tide you over till then, See How They Run should satisfy your comedy mystery cravings. Set in 1953 London, it begins at a special gala performance of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. “It’s a whodunnit, you know the drill, you see one you’ve seen ‘em all,” drawls Adrien Brody’s character, a big-shot Hollywood director set to film a silver screen adaptation, moments before he’s killed by a mystery assailant. Saoirse Ronan, Sam Rockwell and a host of familiar British comedy faces also star.
From the Vault: The Virgin Suicides (1999) (TVNZ+)
A defining part of the millennial experience we don’t talk about enough is how many movies we experienced exclusively via owning the soundtrack on CD. Romeo and Juliet? Never actually saw it but know every song on the soundtrack by heart. Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides is another classic case, with its soundtrack by forgotten (but at the time absolutely massive) French chill-out duo Air. Those guys must be about due for a revival, and while we’re at it maybe this time we’ll get around to checking out the movie too.
Podcast of the Week: Run Hide Repeat
Probably all of us have moments that we look back on as grown-ups and wonder what on earth Mum and Dad were up to, or had times when we were told “I’ll explain when you’re older”. Pauline Dakin’s childhood was like that to the extreme.
The Canadian journalist spent the first 10 years of her life in North Vancouver – during that time her parents got divorced, her dad more or less left the picture and her mum started getting more involved in the church, becoming close with the minister and his wife. If you think you know where this podcast is going, you may not be wrong but you’re also definitely not right.
When Dakin was 10, she left on a five-week camping holiday with her mum, brother and the minister and his wife. When they got to the other side of the country, she was told they weren’t going back to BC and couldn’t tell anyone where they were. The rest of Dakin’s childhood followed a similar pattern – big secrets, sudden moves, constant I’ll-explain-when-you’re-olders. And when that time finally came, the reason her mum gave was wilder than she could have possibly imagined. But the truth was even stranger still.
