![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usedtobeljs[Important: I do not want to yuck anyone's yum, as it were, so I am going to keep my complaints about this show under a cut.]
So Mindy Kaling and Tracy Wigfield have put together a sort-of rom-com homage to 90s and 00s classics of the art in a 10-episode series (airing in the US on Hulu) called, yes, Four Weddings and a Funeral. The first four episodes dropped last week, and a new episode will be released every Wednesday for the next six weeks.
What's good about it? As with the Richard Curtis films which inspire it, the show is a love-letter to London and filmed on location -- but this is a much more diverse London, with the male romantic lead (or so it seems at this writing) a British Pakistani character named Kash Khan, played by Nikash Patel, and the female lead played by Nathalie Emmanuel, who identifies as Black in the script. The Khan family -- because we get the father and younger brother of Kash -- is Muslim, and their mosque is important in Episode 4; this is a cool kind of story we don't see in rom coms. Also, because the filming is in London, great British character actors show up in recurring roles. Most important to me are Alex Jennings who shows up in Episode 3 and is tipped to have an actual arc, and dear Tom Mison, playing a wealthy, alcoholic, sweetheart husband named Quentin.
Okay, that's what's good about it, and I can imagine that for someone who wants to see people like themselves in rom-coms, this is enough to be going on with. Couldn't argue with that.
On the other hand, the script is a MESS.
Kaling and Wigfield noted in interviews that something they loved in the original FWaaF was the friend group, which, fair. To adapt that, they have four American (?!WHY) college friends who have somehow found it super easy to get work visas and are still close half a decade after graduating. We have our heroine Maya (played by Emmanuel), who starts off as the mistress of her boss who's a married US Senator, which, no, and who is crushing on Kash; Ainsley, airhead rich white girl who runs a design business (we have no sense of her competence or design aesthetic 4 episodes in), initially engaged to Kash who leaves her at the altar for Reasons; Craig, Black finance guy at Goldman Sachs who is in love with a terribly stereotyped white chav girl named Zara "like the store"; worst of all, Duffy the white writer-dude who's a teacher, and who reminds me of Xander Harris without the charm or wit. None of these people are well fleshed out, and I cannot imagine why I am supposed to care about them. They all get their own storylines, and the pacing is really off. Just... ugh.
So the Essex-girl stereotypes are terrible, but so are the posh-white-English-people stereotypes. It is a damn credit to the performances of Tom Mison, playing Quentin, and Zoe Boyle, playing Quentin's wife Gemma who is "English best friends" with Ainsley who's their neighbor, that Quentin and Emma are actually weirdly functional and funny and sweet despite the cheap writing. Also, Mison (clean-shaven) looks unbelievably gorgeous. (Here's a fun sight gag demonstrating his cuteness.)
Mison's character is also the one who dies at the end of Episode Three, for literally no good reason.
Alex Jennings' character shows up in Episode 3, playing the gay Tory MP Andrew for whom Maya goes to work. His line readings remind me of the comment Roger Ebert made about Alan Rickman in Robin Hood -- for me, Jennings's performance is from another, better project I'd rather be seeing.
I am really torn about watching the next episodes because I found the first ones so unsatisfying. I probably will give it one more ep before disembarking, but we'll see. I could always just rewatch Good Omens. :)
What fun things are you watching?
So Mindy Kaling and Tracy Wigfield have put together a sort-of rom-com homage to 90s and 00s classics of the art in a 10-episode series (airing in the US on Hulu) called, yes, Four Weddings and a Funeral. The first four episodes dropped last week, and a new episode will be released every Wednesday for the next six weeks.
What's good about it? As with the Richard Curtis films which inspire it, the show is a love-letter to London and filmed on location -- but this is a much more diverse London, with the male romantic lead (or so it seems at this writing) a British Pakistani character named Kash Khan, played by Nikash Patel, and the female lead played by Nathalie Emmanuel, who identifies as Black in the script. The Khan family -- because we get the father and younger brother of Kash -- is Muslim, and their mosque is important in Episode 4; this is a cool kind of story we don't see in rom coms. Also, because the filming is in London, great British character actors show up in recurring roles. Most important to me are Alex Jennings who shows up in Episode 3 and is tipped to have an actual arc, and dear Tom Mison, playing a wealthy, alcoholic, sweetheart husband named Quentin.
Okay, that's what's good about it, and I can imagine that for someone who wants to see people like themselves in rom-coms, this is enough to be going on with. Couldn't argue with that.
On the other hand, the script is a MESS.
Kaling and Wigfield noted in interviews that something they loved in the original FWaaF was the friend group, which, fair. To adapt that, they have four American (?!WHY) college friends who have somehow found it super easy to get work visas and are still close half a decade after graduating. We have our heroine Maya (played by Emmanuel), who starts off as the mistress of her boss who's a married US Senator, which, no, and who is crushing on Kash; Ainsley, airhead rich white girl who runs a design business (we have no sense of her competence or design aesthetic 4 episodes in), initially engaged to Kash who leaves her at the altar for Reasons; Craig, Black finance guy at Goldman Sachs who is in love with a terribly stereotyped white chav girl named Zara "like the store"; worst of all, Duffy the white writer-dude who's a teacher, and who reminds me of Xander Harris without the charm or wit. None of these people are well fleshed out, and I cannot imagine why I am supposed to care about them. They all get their own storylines, and the pacing is really off. Just... ugh.
So the Essex-girl stereotypes are terrible, but so are the posh-white-English-people stereotypes. It is a damn credit to the performances of Tom Mison, playing Quentin, and Zoe Boyle, playing Quentin's wife Gemma who is "English best friends" with Ainsley who's their neighbor, that Quentin and Emma are actually weirdly functional and funny and sweet despite the cheap writing. Also, Mison (clean-shaven) looks unbelievably gorgeous. (Here's a fun sight gag demonstrating his cuteness.)
Mison's character is also the one who dies at the end of Episode Three, for literally no good reason.
Alex Jennings' character shows up in Episode 3, playing the gay Tory MP Andrew for whom Maya goes to work. His line readings remind me of the comment Roger Ebert made about Alan Rickman in Robin Hood -- for me, Jennings's performance is from another, better project I'd rather be seeing.
I am really torn about watching the next episodes because I found the first ones so unsatisfying. I probably will give it one more ep before disembarking, but we'll see. I could always just rewatch Good Omens. :)
What fun things are you watching?
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 05:57 pm (UTC)At present I am watching blue jays and pigeons (oddly, no seagulls nearby) in front of the fabulous foggy view of Salmon Creek on the Sonoma coast. As we drove through Napa and Sonoma counties yesterday I was trying to select locations for your delicious work in progress. So evocative. I hope you get a chance for a refresher visit before too long!
no subject
Date: 2019-08-05 11:48 pm (UTC)I am working away on the project -- new chapter by the end of the month. :)
All hugs, ALH!
no subject
Date: 2019-08-06 02:55 pm (UTC)We're catching up with the Arrowverse before they do their crossover in the fall (which will see the end of Arrow), and I've been binging House and Downton Abbey. Mostly, though, I've been watching the pool in the backyard from my new desk set-up.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-06 11:29 pm (UTC)Cheers for your rewatches and binges, regardless.