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Still Up ★★★½
Apple TV+
The romantic-comedy is the most quietly volatile of genres: in a story where humour, attraction, emotional doubt and romantic satisfaction are in fractious contact, the smallest of adjustments can sink the dynamic and leave the protagonists adrift. One of the things this British series, a nocturnal sojourn where platonic pals can’t avoid the “what if” possibilities, does so well is add and subtract from a familiar formula. Still Up is not radical in its design, it’s reformist – better banter, dafter mishaps, and deeper pangs.
Antonia Thomas in Still Up plays an insomniac with time to kill.Credit: Apple TV+
In an echo of pandemic camaraderie, best friends Danny (Craig Roberts) and Lisa (Antonia Thomas) spend the midnight hours in nightly phone conversations. Both Londoners are insomniacs, and their FaceTime calls are welcome nourishment, especially as Danny is agoraphobic and doesn’t leave his apartment. The pair kill time, drily crack each other up, and serve as a combination cheer squad and conscience. A few minutes in and their rapport is palpable. The question is can their platonic connection become something else?
Creators Steve Burge and Natalie Walter take their time answering this question, shading it in ways that avoid a looming fait accompli. They let their leads talk, establishing a conversational rhythm that can jump around or turn about face as they pass the hours, and bend circumstances to reveal their personalities. Danny, who treats his anxiety with self-deprecation, ends up with a surprising number of visitors, while Lisa’s predilection for shortcuts to save time and bother invariably backfire.
Danny (Craig Roberts) is agarophobic and doesn’t leave his apartment, filling his nights talking to soul-mate Lisa.Credit: Apple TV+
The eight half-hour episodes unfold with a quirky grace that avoids stacking the deck. You come to realise that Danny is a release valve for Lisa, who has a young daughter and a partner, Veggie (Blake Harrison), who is nerdy and a little wearing, but genuinely caring. As both Danny and Lisa start to wonder – never simultaneously – whether they have a different future together, there’s a cost to be felt. Veggie may have an aggravating mother whose enthusiastic digs are sitcom sharp, but his own worries are honest. “I sleep while you shine,” he eventually tells Lisa.
Roberts and Thomas are aces together, bringing an everyday intimacy to their roles in the way that a previous Hollywood generation, such as a Paul Rudd and Reese Witherspoon, could never attain. The lack of glossiness makes the stakes for Danny and Lisa all the higher; their lives only have so much to offer, and losing the other would be a real blow. Every need in Still Up comes at a potential cost and while there are plenty of jokes here, this impressive series never hides from the fact that the lasting one could be heartbreak.
Writer and first-time director Kick Gurry also plays army officer Dylan Fox in C*A*U*G*H*T.Credit: Lisa Tomasetti
C*A*U*G*H*T ★★★
Stan
A geopolitical satire flying by the seat of its khaki pants, this local comedy turns the capture of a quartet of Australian soldiers by rebels on a fictional Pacific Island nation into a whirlwind farce. Facing execution, the Diggers – Rowdy Gaines (Ben O’Toole), Phil Choi (Alexander England), Albhanis Mouawad (Lincoln Younes), and Dylan Fox (Kick Gurry, the show’s creator) – become collaborators, pledging to create viral hostage videos.
Cutting between multiple storylines, including an Australian government led by a sports mad prime minster, Warren Whistle (Bryan Brown), and the fatuous defence minister, “Colonel” Bishop (Erik Thomson), who dispatched the squad, the six half-hour episodes favour sketch comedy energy over narrative tissue. Plausibility is trumped by the gags, of which there are a great many. Enough land – including a Baz Luhrmann corker – to keep the story rolling.
In between ribald set-pieces, Gurry zeroes in on the distorting power of perceptions and our disastrous online culture. He fuels the commentary by getting big names, starting with Hollywood actor Sean Penn, to play caustic versions of themselves. It all adds to the helter-skelter comic energy that surges through C*A*U*G*H*T. Unlike its incompetent captives, this series knows to get in and get out fast.
The Continental: From the World of John Wick
Amazon Prime
Beginning with director Albert Hughes (The Book of Eli), there are capable talents throughout the ranks of this prequel series, but there’s only so much that can done when the element you’re retaining from the John Wick franchise is the arcane criminal lore and mythic hotel in the background of the movies, and not Keanu Reeves’ implacable master assassin. In this extra-grimy 1970s New York, a slew of new characters and their conflicts circle the Continental, including Mel Gibson as a boilerplate villain, but the fight scenes feel derivative and the emotional stakes negligible.
Welcome To Wrexham returns for a second season.Credit: FX
Welcome to Wrexham (season 2)
Disney+
I remain sceptical of the long-term plan behind Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney buying Wrexham AFC, a faltering Welsh side in the fifth tier of English professional football, but for now this canny documentary series about the union mostly delivers feel-good moments. On the field the team have to win promotion, given their new financial advantage, but the series is best as a culture clash satire and, most of all, as a genuine depiction of the bond between a club approximately 160-years-old and the community that has supported it.
2nd Chance
DocPlay
American filmmaker Ramin Bahrani (99 Homes) segues into documentaries without a hitch in this thoughtful, quietly expressive portrait of a quintessentially American entrepreneur. Michael Davis was a failing pizzeria owner who in the 1970s invented Kevlar body armour, which with true salesman ingenuity he would successfully pitch to police departments across the country by putting it on before shooting himself in the chest. Davis became rich, and unsurprisingly ruined it, a process the now ageing businessman tells one way and those it impacted in quite another.
From left: Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis), Elora Danan Postoak (Devery Jacobs), Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) and Cheese (Lane Factor) in Reservation Dogs.Credit: FX
Reservation Dogs
Binge
Now that the third and final season of this terrific comedy has concluded, a reminder that it has consistently been a low-key contender for best-of lists every year since 2021. Created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, Reservation Dogs is a bittersweet, freewheeling coming-of-age story focusing on a quartet of Native American teens hoping to escape their rural Oklahoma hometown. The show has a striking sense of place and a dry sense of humour, letting it engage with bitter history and oddball neighbours alike. Catch up if you can.
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