What to stream this week: Lena Dunham's new comedy and five more picks

Sydney Morning Herald

3 days ago

This week's picks include Lena Dunham's London rom-com, season three of a cerebral science-fiction epic, cute animals and sneaky three-season binge.
Too Much ★★★★ (Netflix)
'Too much' is the criticism Lena Dunham has heard for much of her career. Too much information, too much nudity, too much self-obsession. An iconoclast in her twenties, when she created Girls, one of the definitive shows of the 2010s, Dunham is now on the cusp of 40, married, and living in London. Too Much, her return to television in the streaming era, is Dunham's unique voice measuring the thirty-something experience from the far side. Deceptively ambitious, it's a cascading, contradictory show.
A comic scene-stealer on Hacks, Megan Stalter stars here as Jess Salmon, a New York line producer of television commercials first seen responding to a break-up with questionable judgment. Stalter is a comic force, inhabiting Jess's persona with John Wayne impressions, absurd non-sequiturs, and calamitous self-commentary – her bravura footprint is pitched as a mix of delusion and vulnerability. Seconded to London for work to start over, Jess encounters Felix Remen (Will Sharpe), a cheerfully opaque struggling musician whose chatty calm is reassuring and a barrier.
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Dunham, who wrote or co-wrote each episode and directed all 10, wants to celebrate and subvert the romantic comedy. This is When Harry Went Mental with Sally. There are autobiographical currents aplenty, including an American making sense of London, but equally smartly interwoven threads on relationship expectations and emotional instincts. 'I cannot leave my own chaos,' laments Jess, but Dunham refuses to hold her protagonist to familiar contours. Jess has a vital monologue when she's casually called 'messy'.
The supporting ensemble is overflowing, whether it's Dunham as Jess's depressed Stateside sister Norah or Richard E. Grant as her London boss, or Naomi Watts as his flighty wife. Dunham's ability as a social satirist is strongest now with the privileged, but she's recruiting talent from everywhere – Ripley ' s Andrew Scott features as a moody filmmaker in one episode, while comedian Leo Reich is a performative fireball of gay boy energy as Jess's colleague Boss. The Dunham address book remains immaculate.
There's so much going on here – did I mention Stephen Fry as Felix's manipulative father? – that Too Much risks being, well, too much. The connection between Jess and Felix is genuine, but nonetheless fraught.
Does it build so quickly because neither can allow for reflection? When you strip everything back, the show is about two people prone to self-sabotage instinctively falling in love and trying to make lasting sense of it. It can be eruptive and lacerating along the way, but there's also room for a rom-com reckoning. It's anything but generic: only Lena Dunham could have made this.
Foundation (season 3) ★★★★ (Apple TV+)
All credit to this cerebral science-fiction epic: it's not ducking the many challenges involved in adapting Isaac Asimov's series of ground-breaking novels. Entering its third season, this galactic epic continues to marry a vast and knotty plot to pithy characters, sturdy world building, and urgent resolutions. The additions to the source material are extensive, but in a show meant to cover 1000 years over eight seasons the compromises are, like the story's covert cadre of scientists, keeping the plan on track.
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The plot has jumped forward another 150 years, but a variety of tactics – cloning, cryogenics, automation – keep versions of the original characters involved: the current edition of the galaxy's Emperor, Cleon (Lee Pace), is a druggy nihilist, while the scientist who foresaw civilisation's fall, Hari Seldon (Jared Harris), continues to course correct from the sidelines. Is Foundation too complex for a casual watch? Yes. Is it all the better for it? Absolutely.
The new episodes do get a charge from the addition of a crucial Asimov character, a pirate warlord named The Mule (Pilou Asbaek), whose psychic ability to control minds sits outside the many calculations guiding the show's factions. His demonstrations add an element of horror to Foundation, which also has a sly sense of humour sneaking through. Of the many fantastical elements manifesting here, influencer satire was the least expected.
Underdogs ★★½ (Disney+)
A nature documentary narrated by Deadpool? Ryan Reynolds proves the unlikely successor to Sir David Attenborough in this five-part documentary series from National Geographic. With tongue firmly in cheek, Reynolds is the irreverent guide in this homage to underappreciated species who rarely get top billing.
Episode titles such as Superheroes (shout out to the Velvet Worm), Terrible Parents, and Total Grossout give you a fair idea of the content, which comes with satirical flourishes and self-referential slips. It's rated M, but mostly plays as PG.
Deep Cover ★★★ (Amazon Prime Video)
In this daffy action-comedy, Bryce Dallas Howard plays an American actor in London running improv comedy classes who, along with students played by Orlando Bloom and Nick Mohammed, is asked by the Metropolitan Police to infiltrate a criminal syndicate.
Somehow in this world of guns and poses, the trio make haphazard progress, opening up conspiracies and silliness alike. The supporting cast playing crooks and coppers adds a hard-nosed counterpoint: Sean Bean, Paddy Considine and Ian McShane all try to make sense of the amateurs, some of whom are very good at playing actors who aren't funny.
Dear Ms: A Revolution in Print ★★½ (Max)
First published in 1972, Ms was the American magazine that helped take second-wave feminism into the mainstream, becoming a newsstand sensation (it remains a quarterly publication today) and setting off misogynist tripwires.
With a different director for each episode, this three-part documentary series looks at the birth of Ms, whose founding editors included Gloria Steinem, the way its readership was educated about issues related to feminism, and finally the culture clashes inside and outside the magazine on topics like sex, erotica, and sex work. It's complex but never clunky. The energy then is obvious now.
Sneaky Pete ★★★ (Netflix)
A three-season binge, on Netflix for the first time, this blackly comic 2015 crime drama, created by David Shore (House) and Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston, was part of Amazon Prime Video's initial wave of knotty anti-hero series. Giovanni Ribisi plays a con man just released from jail, who dodges those waiting to harm him by posing as his cellmate and taking up with his mark's estranged family. Given the clan's criminal connections, it's an out-of-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire move, as the new Pete Murphy struggles to keep up. MVP cast member: Margon Martindale as a menacing matriarch.