Karl Puschmann is Culture and entertainment writer for the New Zealand Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.
It's often said, usually from a vantage point of lofty superiority, that hell is other people. But have you ever thought about what it must be like for the other people living with you? Let me fill you in; hellish.
Sorry to break it to you like this, friends,but no matter how likeable/charming/ considerate/ generous/ good looking you are, the fact is that in actuality yours is a very annoying presence.
Lest you think I'm lobbing stones from the barmy environs of a glasshouse let me assure you that I include myself here. I certainly wouldn't want to live with me.
But I reckon that in our hearts we all know exactly how hellish we actually are. It's why the entire self-help genre exists and why at the start of each year we all make self-promises to improve ourselves, to cut down on our pork pies and get some exercise.
The problem being that thinking about improving yourself and actually improving yourself are two entirely different things. The former is quite easy, fun even! The latter is not, requiring a strong mental discipline, lots of hard work and the patience to watch teeny-tiny, incremental results gradually build towards a new and improved you over months and months and months of your time.
But what if there was a way to shortcut this painstakingly slow and painfully painful process? If you could be the best you that you could be without having to put in any of that awful work? Well, that'd be the dream wouldn't it?
This is the premise that kick starts Netflix's new dramedy Living with Yourself. The show follows a burnt out, despondent ad-exec named Miles who visits a mysterious day spa in the hope that their mysterious treatment will rejuvenate, revitalise and re-energise him with no real effort required on his part.
It turns out the mysterious spa's mysterious treatment is to clone their clients, imprint their life memories into the new body and then dispose of the original by murdering them and burying the body in the woods.
The clone then leaves the spa none the wiser, possessing all the life memories but none of the spirit crushing fatigue that plagued the original. The person leaves quite literally feeling like a new man.
Here, however, the muder of Miles didn't stick and the show opens with a confused, frightened and naked Miles bursting out of the shallow grave he'd been buried in while his clone, Miles 2, assumes his life with uncharacteristic joy, optimism and competence.
Paul Rudd - and Paul Rudd in Living With Yourself.
So it's a sci-fi set-up but there's no techno babble or aliens or spaceships here. The show remains grounded in its relationships and the ideas it explores. Once you accept that cloning can be done at a strip mall then there's really nothing here to scare off folks who would usually find sci-fi anathema.
But the show's biggest reassurance is the casting of Paul Rudd as Miles and his clone Miles 2. As well as being completely resistant to the ravages of time, Rudd is also by far the most likable actor working today.
His presence here also works as a recommendation; it's a sign that while this show may not blow your mind and join the pantheon of TV greats, it will still most assuredly be entertaining and worth your time.
And that's pretty much the case. You get a double dose of Rudd as both the miserable Miles and the go-getting clone, Miles 2. It's a lot of fun seeing Rudd spar with himself as the schlubby Miles goes head-to-head against the superior version of himself as he tries to reclaim his life, his wife and his identity.
The show's also the best kind of bingeable, fast paced and keeping things interesting by shuffling time between episodes to show the same scenes but from various perspectives.
The actions of Miles take on an entirely different weight when seen from the view of Miles 2 or his wife Kate, played by the superb Aisling Bea, who, through no fault of her own, has to try to make sense of the complicated and messy situation her husband has landed her in. It's a neat trick that doesn't get old.
The show's inventive and humourous, but skews towards the drama as it explores its existential concepts. And while the first half of the eight-episode series is stronger than the second it remains entertaining viewing throughout.
And if there's one thing the show proves above all else it's that while hell is other people things could always be much, much worse. You could always be living with yourself.
