What do Seth Rogen and Lena Dunham have in common?
It's Judd Apatow, but this post definitely isn't about him. It's about good TV.
Have you watched The Studio yet?
Apple TV+ started dropping episodes of entertainment industry satire, The Studio, within days of the second season of their mega hit, Severance, ending. This is a well-worn strategy for streaming services when they get a huge uptick of subscribers for a hit show, to keep the revenue flowing. The two shows operate in different tonal universes, but it appears to have paid off. A lot of people have watched this show that otherwise wouldn’t have, not least because Apple TV+ are otherwise known for poorly marketing some excellent content (Pachinko, stunning, watch it!).
The Studio is a critical darling and I’m yet to encounter anyone who doesn’t like it. It is certainly one of my favourite shows of the year so far.
Seth Rogen plays legacy movie studio executive, Matt Remick, who gets his longed-for promotion to lead the studio, only to realise very quickly that his idealistic vision of creating art is going to be immediately trampled by subservience to the bottom line.
This missive from studio overlord, Griffin Mill (played by Bryan Cranston) - “We don’t make films, we make movies. We’re not artists, we’re executives” - sets up the tension.
It’s clever, very clever, but also accessible enough for a broad audience to walk away with something they enjoy.
Showbiz satire The Studio pulls off an anatomical feat, shoving its head so far up its own ass that it comes out the other side resembling something genuine and heartfelt.
https://www.vulture.com/article/the-studio-seth-rogen-apple-series-review.html
The series regulars are excellent - they had me at Kathryn Hahn but I would’ve stayed for Catherine O’Hara - and the guest star line-up is actually staggering. Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Zoë Kravitz, Adam Scott, Aaron Sorkin, Jean Smart, more Hacks stars, Olivia Wilde, Ice Cube, you get the picture. Almost all of these guest stars play themselves.
Each episode follows only one storyline and every storyline is goofy. You could dip in and out of this show and not suffer. But why would you want to? Watch one episode and you’ll want to watch them all.
And if you’ve watched The Studio, I must insist you listen to an accompanying podcast episode. Seth Rogen and his long time creative partner, Evan Goldberg, wrote and directed this show and a recent interview they did on The Severance Podcast is what sparked this entire post.
The Severance Podcast, hosted by Severance director Ben Stiller and lead actor Adam Scott, was brilliant during its initial run, analysing Season 1 episodes before the second season aired, but lost steam doing real-time episode breakdowns of Season 2 because of their inability to spoil upcoming plot.
It unexpectedly returned last week with The Studio creators. Their story about anticipating filming with Scorsese was particularly delightful.
Have you read the New York Times 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century list?
In the interview they also spoke about Superbad, Rogen and Goldberg’s first commercial success, which they started writing together in their teens.
I just watched Superbad after it appeared at #100 on the New York Times 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century list (#53 on the readers choice version).
I’ll talk more about that list and my ambitious plan to watch every movie on it in another post.
Here’s my Letterboxd profile in the meantime, if you hang out there, and I’d love to hear what movies on the NYT list you love, hate and what you have been meaning to watch for, like, ever.
Are you planning on watching Too Much?
Rogen and Goldberg also talked about the heavy sponsorship of Judd Apatow, famous comedy director and producer, in their early creative lives. Apatow was of course a major player in the early career of Lena Dunham.
This week I finished season 1 of Dunham’s Girls, my first rewatch since it originally aired in 2012.
I’d forgotten a lot. Adam Driver was there from episode 1! The famous scene of Hannah and Marnie dancing to Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” was at the end of the third episode! The third episode had another scene in heavy rotation on social media during Pride Month recently because it’s where Elijah turns up, Hannah’s college boyfriend that she has connected with to share the bombshell news that she has HPV and he one-ups her with the news that he is gay AND he thinks her dad is gay.
This show is one of the most exceptional TV shows of the 21st century (where’s that list, New York Times?) and it will be discussed and studied for decades to come. It is a classic. Dunham’s talents were unparalleled.
I spent some time recently refreshing myself on Dunham’s career and her rocky public profile (ok, I read Wikipedia, but it is one of the better ones). Other than directing the incredible pilot of the INCREDIBLE TV show, Industry, she hasn’t done anything in the TV landscape worth writing about since Girls, imho, and her public profile has been deliberately low.
Dunham is everywhere right now though - she even has a Substack and has popped up in the Criterion Closet – because her first major creative contribution in years has just landed on Netflix. A 10-episode romantic comedy miniseries, Too Much, which is loosely based on parts of her life since Girls. I’m curious to see whether Dunham’s best work comes in semi-autobiographical form, given Girls was drawn from her life at the time too.
The early reviews are mixed. The New Yorker has a bold claim…
…but Metacritic has it at 68 at the time of writing, which isn’t a ringing endorsement.
At the very least it has Megan Stalter as the lead, the recognisable nepobaby hopeless/hapless troll, Kayla, from Hacks and the new IT girl of the tv comedy scene.
Of course I chose this month to unsubscribe from Netflix for the first time since it launched in Australia as a cost cutting measure, so I can’t actually start watching Too Much yet.
So, I need you to tell me – is it good?!