The DropDid 'woke culture' really kill the sitcom? Plus, the era of 'Mid TV'
Jerry Seinfeld ignited a fire when he blamed "the extreme left and PC crap" for ruining comedy in a recent interview with The New Yorker. But is comedy really dead, and if so, who is to blame?
In this week's episode Thomas, Osman, and a fresh-from-her-holiday Mel dissect comedy and cancel culture, before turning to their attention to the claim that we're in the era of so-called "Mid TV". Does Amazon Prime's new rom-com, The Idea of You, starring Anne Hathaway, show the demise or potential of television in 2024?
Plus, our pop culture recommendations for the week.
Hey, I'm Usman Farooqi and this is the drop a culture show from the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, where we dive into the latest in the world of pop culture and entertainment. I'm here with Thomas Mitchell and the Zendaya of this podcast. Mel Kambouris is here. She's back baby, how you doing Mel?
Ah I'm good. Look at this smile. I'm so happy to be back with you guys, mainly to save you from yourselves, but also just to hang out.
Thomas is beaming. Thomas is beaming.
I am very excited. I did miss Melanie. Uh, not as much as the listeners, and especially my sister, who kept texting me asking when Mel would be back on the podcast.
The best Mitchell in the family.
You could have come back a week earlier when we fumbled our way through a conversation about mothers in live comedy spaces and, uh, the biggest woman pop star in the history of the world. You know, I.
Know I feel like I missed out on some subjects where I really would have had a point of view. But, I mean, you guys, you guys handled it, I'm sure.
Well, I mean, you don't know if we handled it because. And this is like, really doing my head in. Mel refused to listen to the podcast while she was on holidays.
I didn't refuse. It was just I knew if I listened to it, I would kind of get sucked in and I'd want to engage and I wouldn't be able to tap out, and I kept I knew, I kept saying, I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it. And then I just never did it. So now I don't know what you've said about me, what's slander, what lies you've told, but I'm just going to have to let it sit.
Well, okay, so you weren't listening to the podcast, but what were you doing? Can you tell us a bit about this trip? What were the highlights?
Oh, there was lots of lots of fun. So I went to Dubai. I went to Paris, went to London, they went to Singapore. So a little round trip. I have to say one of the highlights was all the plane films I got. Yeah. So it's a.
Lot of flights. What did you watch?
Yeah. And like this is actually quite fitting because I watched a lot of mid films. I don't like watching like really good films on planes. So I kind of used it as an opportunity to catch up on all the kind of things I hadn't quite got around to like. I watched Mean Girls the Musical, not not great. Wonka, Wonka the musical. Wow. Not not great. I checked in on Woody Allen watch. Stroke of luck. Very Woody Allen. Still doing the same thing. Not not not great. Um, and then I watched. Are you There? God. It's me, Margaret, which.
Is pretty great film. Pretty great film.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was the best of the lot.
But in, like, all this hours of flying time, you couldn't find any time for a mid podcast that you sometimes that you sometimes feature on.
Well, I knew I definitely needed to listen to it when I was connected to the internet so I could give you kind of live feedback on it. But you know what else I did watch another kind of mid thing, um, you, you know, the thriller. You I've watched you I never watched it though. A great Netflix.
Show with the guy from Gossip Girl.
Yeah. That's it, Ben Badgley. Um, yeah. Very bingeable on a plane.
Are you up to date with any new releases?
Well, no. The new releases were all things we've seen or discussed, really. But I did go back and watch Priscilla again, which I had seen in cinemas, and I do think that film was like hugely underrated. I really liked that film.
Have you seen challenges yet?
I still haven't seen it. They didn't have it on the plane, but I also would not have watched it on the plane because I feel like I need to watch that in the cinema.
You need the cinematic experience, you need the audio reverberating from that soundtrack in a cinema for that one. Yeah, I.
Agree, and you probably would watch it on a plane because you fly business class. But for the rest of us, economy is not where you did all those flights. Economy I am I like at the end I was like, this is inhumane how we have to the worst.
Thing about you not seeing challenges or not being here for our discussion was that I couldn't, like, hastily make a meme with the three of us are sitting on the bed like the challenges mean that he's currently doing the rounds on the internet.
Uh, the way that that film has just become like the pop cultural zeitgeist kind of thing of the moment. It's pretty extraordinary. I watched it again, actually, and had a bit more fun with it this time when I wasn't trying to, I guess, overanalyze what it was trying to say about the world, as we discussed on last week's episode. But it is a really fun film, and it makes total sense. I think it's sort of like the Saltburn of this current moment. There's just so many like, fan edits all over TikTok, but it's a much better film than Saltburn.
I'm very excited to see it. And have you guys each considered taking up kind of fashion to serve the tennis fashion?
Well, I'm pretty good at tennis, so so I feel like I've got that covered. We should actually play tennis one day. That would be.
Fun. I dropped tennis.
Comp. I would absolutely play tennis with you guys. I'd beat you both so hard.
Do you actually think so?
I reckon I would crush you both.
I'm pretty nimble.
You guys are both pretty good at tennis. You're telling me?
But we play doubles together, obviously.
And we did actually get a review while you were away, Mel. And the title was you need Mel. Exclamation mark, exclamation mark. Uh, it was by, um, someone called Del Kathryn, who is maybe the two time Archibald Prize winner, del Kathryn Barton, if it's you. Thanks for listening and I guess thanks for your review. I don't know, they said I love this podcast, but it's seriously lacking chemistry and nuance without Mel. I hope she's back soon. Seriously lacking chemistry and nuance. That's a lot. I thought you and I, Thomas had heaps of chemistry. Maybe even too much chemistry.
That's what I think as well.
I can imagine just telling each other how jacked you are for like hours on end.
It was the most obnoxious echo chamber, but I loved it. Couldn't wait to get back here every week. No, but yeah, like that is a, I guess look. It's a scathing but also kind of nice review. But I do suspect that people the people miss Melanie Kembrey. Uh, they missed her smart and nuanced takes and also all her book chats. So I think we're all glad that she's back. Uh, and she also went to a bunch of jazz clubs when she was away. So she's into jazz now. So there's so much to learn about the new mill. And I'm very glad you're back on the pod.
Yeah, that's very nice. Thank you. Thomas, maybe the nicest thing you've ever said to me. Um, no.
It's great. The Dream Team is here. We're ready to tackle the big questions looming over culture this week, which include are we living in an era of mid TV? That's a question that was posed by the New York Times chief TV critic this week. Really, really interesting. Long read looking at the current state of the TV landscape and why so much of it, even the most interesting shows, the ones that we talk about pretty regularly, don't seem to be hitting as hard as great television used to. We're going to dig into that piece and discuss our thoughts. We're also, and I'm very excited for this one, going to discuss the new Anne Hathaway rom com that is being released on Amazon Prime Video today. The idea of you, where it fits into this contemporary rom com renaissance that we seem to be going through. But first Guys, Jerry Seinfeld has some thoughts about the state of comedy. He's promoting his upcoming Netflix film Unfrosted, which is about the origin of the Pop-Tart. Yep, that's a real movie that is coming out, directed by starring Jerry Seinfeld. In a podcast interview with The New Yorker's editor David Remnick, Seinfeld shared his view that, quote, the extreme left and PC crap had made it harder for comedians to write sitcoms like his obviously famous and beloved show, Seinfeld. Thomas, you covered what Seinfeld said for us in the paper this week. Can you tell us a bit more about what he actually discussed with Remnick?
Yes. Uh, firstly, I just think it's very funny that Seinfeld, a guy who has done like four projects, one of them being about a pop tart, one of them about a bee is like is coming in and making these comments like, he doesn't work a lot, but I mean, he doesn't need to. He's like, show has been syndicated. Um, so his wallet is well lined. But yeah, as you said, the the interview, it's one of those things where you can tell as soon as you read a story and, you know, 80% of the story is, you know, just them chatting and then there's 20%. And as soon as you read that, 20%, you know that this is going to be all the headlines are about. But essentially in this chat, uh, he talk turns to the current state of comedy. And the interviewer asked, like, how do you grapple with all the seriousness the world is currently facing and how it affects comedy? And Jerry kind of goes on to say that nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. And then he begins to lament more the the death of the sitcom and how sitcoms aren't a thing anymore.
It used to be you would go home. At the end of the day, most people would go, oh, cheers is on. Oh, mash is on a Mary Tyler Moore is on, all in, the family is on. You just expected there'll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight. Well guess what? Where is it? Where is it? Um, this is the result of the extreme left and PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people. Mhm. Um.
And that was particularly the comments that, you know, everyone cherry picked and jumped on as, oh, this is, you know, is Jerry Seinfeld one of the great comics of our time, you know, saying that comedy is is dead now as a result of the extreme left. Other things that I think are interesting that people have also jumped on. He does talk about, you know, David Remnick says, well, what about Curb Your Enthusiasm, a show that you're involved with that only just finished that is famously pretty, you know, happy to take on anyone and everyone. But Jerry says, well, look, Larry David's a special case. He's got, you know, a lot of skin in the game, money in the bank. He's been around forever before these kind of rules were enforced. And so he doesn't really count because.
Isn't that what curb is all about? Yeah.
Larry was Larry was grandfathered in. He's old enough that I don't have to observe those rules because I started before you made those rules.
We did. And basically he ends it by saying, look, the reality is, if Larry David was 35, there's no way he would be able to, as a young comic, get these ideas over the line. And essentially he ends it with saying, stand up comedy is the place where the edgy and risky comedy can live. Now the sitcom is dead, although he does concede towards the end that maybe things are slightly correcting back in the right way now. Maybe our, you know, this over political correction is is is over, and we're going to start to see a more sane approach to comedy. And naturally, you know, that has ignited, again, a kind of culture war where people on the right are being like, yes. Finally, Jerry Seinfeld, you know, is saying what we're all thinking. You've got Elon Musk tweeting out clips from the interview saying, ah, thank you, Jerry. And then at the same time, people on the other side of the spectrum are saying, oh, here we go again. This is John Cleese and Ricky Gervais and Dave Chappelle, all these rusted on comics who do not lack a platform saying that you can't say anything anymore. So that's kind of the state of play. Yeah, it's.
A really another really interesting example of how everyone on every side of this would just sort of cherry pick the one line that they think backs up their own perspective on this issue. When I saw this stuff being sort of dunked on on social media, a lot of people immediately pointed out, well, you know, what about curb? And it's interesting, as you pointed out, that in his interview actually sort of discusses that head on. And I want to I want to talk to you guys about that. Whether we think he's right in terms of his argument that Larry's grandfathered into the system, I'm kind of also a bit confused by his reference to to shows like Mash and cheers. Like, is Mash like a famously anti-woke show? It's like a satire on the Korean War. I know there's a character called Hot Lips Houlihan, and there was like a lot of casual sexual harassment of her in the workplace, which in this instance was a mobile surgical hospital in Korea. Uh, so maybe that couldn't happen as much. Maybe that's not necessarily a bad thing, but, um, I yeah, I kind of think there's maybe a couple of different bits of this. One is what happened to the sitcom, because Jerry's right that we don't have shows like Mash and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, uh, on every night. And then there's a question of, okay, is that because of a oppressive culture that doesn't let comedians write on his jokes? What was your kind of immediate reaction to this one? Mel?
Yeah, I mean, I guess alarm bells always ring for me when someone who is no longer quote unquote as relevant as they once were suddenly bemoans their lack of relevance, but blames it on everyone else rather than reflecting on their own kind of brand of comedy. I agree with you. I was quite confused by those references to say that the sitcom doesn't exist in the form of Mary Tyler Moore. Cheers. Mash. Well, like, I mean, I agree with him. We don't really have laugh tracks and live audiences. We don't have sitcom seasons that are 30 episodes. We don't really have those four camera kind of shots anymore. So yeah, I guess I'm not going to argue with him. That Mary Tyler Moore style of sitcom doesn't exist. And I agree with you. Also, they're not really examples of kind of daring comedy either. Um, but I will disagree on the fact that he's lying, that there is no longer room for inoffensive comedy. Whatever he takes inoffensive to mean. I don't think that's true. I think the sitcom has evolved, and I still think there are. There are shows that are pushing the edges of what comedy is on TV. So I disagree on that point.
That was my initial reaction as well. And I went straight to say a show like curb, which at some point I literally just wrapped up and continued to say all sorts of things that people say, you can't say anymore about race and religion and gender and, you know, gender identity and sexuality and all these kinds of things. I also thought about a show, one of my favorite shows, Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which just like continues to find. Quite funny and interesting ways to say extremely crass things. But then I wanted to ask you guys about his argument that, okay, sure, shows like that exist, but they've been around for decades. They started an era where it was, according to him, easier to say whatever you wanted and you couldn't do it now if you were a 35 year old Larry David. Do you think there's some merit to that? Thomas?
Yeah, I do think there is like, you know, Always Sunny started in 2005. That's a very long time ago. So many people like this tweet yesterday went viral about the popularity of Veep, a sitcom that is again, you know, doesn't shy away from going into areas that are tricky. But also, like Veep started in 2012, that's like now 12 years ago. It was also starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, one of the most famous sitcom stars of all time. And it's created by Armando Iannucci, who has got, like, enormous money in the bank. These are not like these are people who will get their shows greenlit. I get the feeling with this entire thing and what's kind of been lost in maybe the edit of the transcript or, or just what we got to see of the chat. I really think, like Jerry was talking about the state of comedy right now. If you're a young up and comer, that's not like able to just like use your back catalog to get something over the line. Like, I feel like he was that got lost in the back and forth. But you know, obviously there are going to be people who can get edgy shows made. But I think he's saying if you're a 20 something, 30 something comic and you're pitching to a network and you don't have a lot of, you know, prior experience and you're trying to write something edgy, there's a high chance that you may get like sense checked to death before you get anywhere near like, production. And I think in some ways, I definitely think that there's a lot in this that I don't agree with. And there is an element of like a 70 year old multi-million dollar comedian who just, like, collects classic cars and doesn't probably watch much contemporary TV being out of touch. But I do think there is something to be said about the way in which shows get made by committee now at these big networks, and they are more risk adverse. And so there is a reality. If you're a young comic that's trying to write something really fucking weird, that maybe you do just get like Committee to Death. Like I can see that being a reality.
What? Look, I think I think a couple of things there. I think I think you're right that say, shows like Veep and Always Sunny are of even a slightly different era to where we are right now and benefit from having these big names. But I also think, you know, there's a big gap between Mash and Mary Tyler Moore and and Veep and Always Sunny. So I think I think he's kind of I think the most obvious thing that he's probably wrong on is that we just don't have comedies like we did in the 70s, like that was 50 years ago. If we're saying, okay, we don't have comedies like we used to have 12 years ago, that's a slightly different point. I think it's maybe one that is worth thinking about a bit, a bit more deeply. And I actually think there is something to what you're saying, and I'm not sure whether it's self-censorship. I'm not sure whether it's genuine, like, you know, standards of what people think is funny, changing. I think part of it is that, like, there are just some things that people don't want to say now, because saying the n word as a white person is not a good thing to do. So that's part of it too. But I wonder whether some of what is going on is a conservatism or a fear of radicalism, or a fear of risk taking that is existing at the big networks and big streamers. A show like Barry, I think, really delved into this, where you see these committees in action. This is a show about a hit man who tries to become an actor, but it ends up in its later seasons being about Hollywood and how you get TV shows green light. And it is very scathing of this process. And it basically shows how a combination of like risk averse executives, algorithms and all these sorts of things are aimed at just creating the lowest cost possible show for the broadest possible audience, which maybe means you don't get something that is a bit edgy and a bit provocative. And I think about things like, you know, Post-black Lives Matter. There's episodes of Always Sunny that don't exist on streaming platforms anymore because it involves them doing blackface, and they've since talked about it and they've made an episode reckoning with it, one of my favorite episodes of community, where they all play Dungeons and Dragons, doesn't exist anymore because Senor Chang is in blackface. And I got to say, like, I don't know, like, I think it's okay to say that's bad without saying you endorse blackface. And I wonder whether there is an element of truth in some of what he's saying, in that there is just a lack of people willing to push a boundary for a comedic effect, because streamers don't want to be considered anti-woke, or they just don't want to deal with a headache of their offices being picketed and then being the subject of petitions and campaigns. Yeah, I.
Mean, it's a very complicated discussion, and it's hard to unpick because I think to really broad terms like woke and cancel culture are thrown out and no one really knows what we're talking about and what counts as cancel culture, what counts as woke. So the conversation becomes very congested. I think we've had like a significant amount of social change in quite a short amount of time with Black Lives Matter, MeToo, and everyone is still trying to adjust and eventually an equilibrium will return. But at the moment we're in the midst of it and trying to figure it out. I will also say there's something generational going on to like. It is about what different generations find funny, and that might be also what Jerry Seinfeld. Comments are identifying that his generation and a new generation making TV. It might not necessarily be because they're self-censoring, as people like to think it might be, because what they find funny is very different. Um, and I do think I mean, I think of Dave that that TV show that we always tell you to watch, like that's not a politically correct show, is it? And that is, that's out there. Even shows like, I mean, Master of None, I think of Derry Girls. I'm trying to think of shows that are more classic sitcoms. I mean, they are still pushing boundaries in certain ways. They're just pushing those boundaries in a different way to the shows that Seinfeld is presumably referring to.
Yeah, I think that makes sense, and I'm actually way more interested in hearing from the creators of shows like Always Sunny and Dave about what they think about this issue, because they are currently, in a contemporary sense, engaged in the art of making funny TV shows that try to push boundaries, but also do it in a way that is like clear that they're on the right side, if you know what I mean, that they're like, I want to talk about these ideas, but I'm actually not a right wing person who doesn't believe in a trans person's right to exist or whatever. I think the thing with Jerry Seinfeld weighing in on this discussion is it's not like Seinfeld was like necessarily a super edgy, provocative show, like, largely family friendly entertainment. And it's not like his new film, the Pop-Tarts movie is, like particularly boundary pushing. It's like, I'm interested to hear what Larry David has to say about this. I also wonder whether part of his desire to to to step in on this, you know, he's before Unfrosted was like most recently in the media because he's regularly now subject to protests because of his views on on Israel. And sometimes you see this from people of a certain generation where they they think they're on the right side. And then a younger generation says you're on the wrong side. And they react and say, well, the extreme left and PC culture is, you know, ruining everything. I think there is something in, in the debate around like what you can and can't say and what you can and can't make comedy about. I'm just not sure that Jerry is the right person to frame that debate. When there is a new generation of comedians who are trying to have these conversations.
Yeah. Completely agree. And also, as you mentioned, he was famously family friendly. Like he's made the argument before about why he doesn't swear and why inoffensive comedy is a great kind of comedy. So it does feel odd that he's now decrying the lack of quote unquote offensive comedy, which is a strange kind of label in itself that could probably be unpacked.
Yeah, I think we've just discussed like, half a dozen shows that are more edgy than Seinfeld ever was as well.
Yeah, for sure. Curb really is. And I know you mentioned this, Thomas Curb really is an example of someone who is, you know, with Larry David, I think he's 76 now who is still making comedy. That is hitting the mark in this day and age. So I don't think it's just about people being I don't think it's about comedy changing as much as it is about certain comedians not changing in response to kind of the world around them.
It is funny, though, how he makes the point, and I guess this really, like contextualizes Jerry a lot. He makes the point in the interview that, you know, or he's kind of big point is that comedy and sitcoms are dying because there are no new sitcoms in this fall schedule in America on the four kind of major networks over there. But of course, like, who cares about that? Like four networks, like, everyone watches stuff on streaming now like that. You know, the fact that there's no new NBC comedy or anything on CBS or that would be like, you know, in Australia when we, you know, do the upfronts at all of our major networks. And very often the conversation is around like, well, there are so few new original dramas on like seven, nine, ten. That would be like us being like, oh my God, dramas are dead. When in reality, like all of the best stuff that's being commissioned and the new stuff is happening on like Stan, Netflix, Amazon, binge, like that's where the new commission is happening. Not the major like free to air networks.
Yeah. I mean, clearly Jerry is not aware of Young Sheldon, which I think is killing it on one of these networks. But yeah, yeah, I think that's a whole other part to this conversation, which I think we're going to have in a bit more detail around our chat about mid television. But we've talked about it before as well in the show, the structures of how TV works now, it's just so fundamentally different, like networks or people who have money and commissioning TV shows aren't reliant on 30 episode runs of 20 minute sitcoms that have advertising partners that bring in all the revenue. That's just not how the TV model works anymore. And I think, you know, I think maybe in some ways that's bad, but I think in other ways it's led to an explosion in the kinds of creators who were never allowed to make those big network sitcoms make smaller shows for streaming, and have them land like Atlanta is a show that just would not have existed in an era of network dominated comedies. Shows like Dave are the same. There's all these shows that maybe they'll commissioned by HBO or FX, but they really found their audiences online rather on late night TV. And yeah, I think that's probably a way bigger factor in why TV comedies look different now than this society wide fear of saying the wrong thing. But like I said, I do think that there is a risk adverse nature. Probably more so, I think, from. Then from young comics and comedy writers. So I think are trying to find ways to talk about edgy, for lack of a better term, ideas in a way that is interesting and provocative and genuinely funny.
Yeah. And I think that is where you set the you separate the curds from the way, if that is what you do with the curds and the way where you like being a proper artist, making something.
Yeah. I don't know what either.
Curds are way off.
Frankly, I believe you separate them. Um, I guess my point is where you separate true artists from the kind of the chaff.
If the 17th century.
From old London town. Um, because I do think true art has to press upon the boundaries of the world. It is made in like that's part of its job. Right? And I do think it takes a certain kind of person to be brave enough to do that. And like art is about being brave. So yeah, I think there's a lot of artists who probably aren't brave enough to do that. But then every so often you get someone who is and they do jump out. People like the creator of Dave or some of the other shows that we've mentioned where they are willing to cop the consequences.
It seems to me that having like, read about this and spoken to lots of people, that the the generally like sensible take. Is that what Jerry saying is a bit crazy, and it definitely shouldn't probably be coming from him. One of the most powerful people in comedy. But there was a little kernel of truth, and especially some of the stuff about that, like being, you know, like jokes by committee, being the end of comedy and scripts or comedic ideas going to all these different hands at an executive level, which kind of renders the comedy dead and buried. And it seems like people kind of connect it to that idea. So while the framing and execution and maybe the broader argument that Jerry was making, people are like, oh, I don't know, there was something that struck a chord with people. So I guess, like, therein lies whatever's going on right now. People are like, we don't fully agree with you. But also there is a general feeling that perhaps this risk adverse nature is hamstringing comedy a little bit.
All right, well, we've got another interesting conversation coming up about the state of television more generally. But why don't we take a bit of a detour to talk about brand new movie? Movies are out, guys. There are new ones coming out. This one is out literally today. It stars Anne Hathaway. It's called the idea of you.
How did you guys meet? We need to know the story. We met at.
Coachella. Hi. Hi.
This is your trailer?
Yeah, I'm in the band performing on the main stage.
August moon. Yeah.
I met someone tonight.
It's based on a book by the American actress Robin Lahue. I'd never heard of before, but apparently she's in, like, the latter 250 Shades films. And this is her debut book she wrote. The film is written and directed by Michael Showalter, who's a very experienced hand when it comes to comedy and romcoms. He directed The Big Sick and the Wet Hot American Summer franchise. The movie is about Anne Hathaway's character. Celine is a 40 year old single mum. She takes her daughter and her friends to Coachella, where they've got VIP passes to meet the members of a fictional boy band, which is a pretty obvious One Direction stand in. A daughter and her friends are really busy watching Saint Vincent, as you do at Coachella, and Celine has a run in with one of the members of the band, a young man called Haze Campbell, played by Nicholas Galitzine from Red, White and Royal Blue and Bottoms fame. They have this meet cute. They fall for each other. Basically, what follows are the ups and downs of a love affair between a single mum and a 24 year old British pop star. Do you remember.
Me? But we met in Coachella.
Yes, I remember you well.
I desperately need some artwork.
Why don't we start in the back? I like. These are fantastic.
This piece is from my friend Sarah. What's it called? Unclose me.
What do you feel when you look at it?
Everything.
Now, this movie on the surface, doesn't feel like a necessarily very hefty or complicated story. It's a little bit frothy, but I got to say, I had a really fun time with this one. It landed for me in the anyone but you sort of frame, but I think it's better. I think this is like a genuinely quite a well written and well directed film. I think Anne Hathaway probably elevated a lot for me. I think she's like moments where she's like crying and really acting. And Nicholas Galitzine, who I liked in everything he's done before, he's like a little bit one note, but he brings enough to this, and the movie ends up being a bit more interesting than just this frothy rom com. It's a bit about, you know, the weight of fame on a young star and the expectations of a woman in her 40s who was a single mom, and whether she can date and have a good time. And the ending was. Less predictable than I expected it to be. So I had a really good time with this film and would recommend it. How did you guys feel about the idea of you?
Yeah, I definitely would have watched this on the plane if if it was an option available. Yeah, I agree with you largely, but one thing that really bothered me was the worst part of this was the actual romantic part of it. Oh, really? Yeah.
I just you didn't Melwas texted me yesterday being like, this is so unbelievable.
Soul and Hayes I just could not they just I could not understand what they liked about each other. Like, I don't think they showed enough.
Super hot. And he's super hot.
Yeah, but I didn't even really get like the chemistry didn't seem real. They didn't have any kind of intellectual collection. He, like, hates her art and what she believes in. They didn't really have any emotional connection like the most emotion we showed. I just didn't believe that they actually really liked each other and that their chemistry was there. And like, I thought it was so funny. He was wearing like a hat at one stage. That said, simple on top of it, and I was like, that is what you are. You are very simple. And then another I don't know if the show was being self-referential, but he also said, I'm just English works a charm. And I was like, that's all you are. There's just I did not buy it.
She is sick of fuckboy loser men, including her ex-husband, who literally cheated on her, and she thinks this young guy who is a young pop star is another one of these fellows. But turns out he's actually really smart and really interesting and really nice and really handsome. And she's like, God, you know what? I don't need some loser who thinks he's actually great and progressive and cool. You're actually just like a nice, simple English guy who seems way nicer than he should be because he's a pop star.
Sorry. He's not smart, though. He walked into the art store. He's. This is meant to be some profound artist, and he's like, what is art about? What does it all mean? And then he goes, and he buys all her art because he's so rich to show off his wealth that he can just buy out her gallery, her life's work in one go. And we're meant to think that that's like an attractive move, but I will. Aside from Hayes, I will agree with you. Anne Hathaway carried this like, completely carried it the best parts of it were when he was not in it, and she was dealing with the repercussions of like a normal civilian being caught up in a media storm, dealing with the kind of the perception of a cougar like and all of that. That was definitely the best part. He was not necessarily necessary at all. I didn't buy it. I would have had far less of him, far more of an.
I can't believe like six weeks.
Off hasn't been able to warm up your cold, dead.
Heart.
Did you really think they had it?
Why would you? I thought this to him.
I thought this movie was really fun. I definitely don't think it's in the ballpark of anyone. But you agree? It's. It's you.
Guys. Anyone but you is better than this.
Way better. Way better. Interesting. I feel like.
It's more knowing this wasn't knowing enough for me.
I just think this feels way more designed for like a streamer, whereas this is like proper mid. Whereas anyone but you felt like a proper old school rom com film, but they're both really good and I can see why they're in the conversation together. And I can see also why they're being both like part of the chat about the return of rom coms. Like it was a fun movie. I thought Anne Hathaway was great. Um, and I definitely thought the chemistry was like, you know, this tapped into so many like, rom com devices, like the, you know, it was like a reverse Notting Hill where she's a civilian and he's famous. Then there was like the age gap romance, and it kind of navigated those things really well. And she, they set up so well. Why a woman like her, this 40 year old single mom who has like, you know, we saw her sitting on the couch, like swiping through apps, looking at these people, these like sad options that are available to her. You can see why she may actually pursue an opportunity like this should it come up. Whereas and also, I would catch all of this with when you watch a rom com, the first rule is that you have to suspend disbelief because like, of course this shit is going to be a little bit like stretched.
I know, I totally, yeah, totally. I mean, like Notting Hill, a great movie, probably one of the best rom coms ever made. And this has been called a reverse Notting Hill for the obvious reasons of who's the famous one. That also makes no sense. Like, why does she love Hugh Grant? Like, why does Hugh Grant not know who the biggest movie star in the world is like? Doesn't make any sense.
Yeah, it's not so much the believability of the concept. I know you have to postpone that. It's just like you never saw them having any kind of. I never understood what their relationship was. You think.
They didn't have real.
Chemistry.
Like when they were at.
What about when she having.
Dinner in Paris or Italy and he says he's like, are you having a good time? And she says, we. And he's like, hahahahaha! And I was like, that's your that's like it. That is what you laugh about.
What about when she.
Rocks up at his hotel and she's like, got that nice dress on. And he's like.
Well, that also didn't fully make sense to me. How she suddenly embraced overnight her her inner sexy lady and was all of a sudden a seductress, I.
Think I think one of the things that surprised me about this movie, we've been talking about movies like challenges, anyone but you was bringing kind of sex back to cinema. I thought this movie was, like, more explicitly sexy than either of those movies. The scene where they kind of first hook up, where he's playing her, the song on the piano like that was that was that was real chemistry that that was great. I thought.
Yeah, I mean, Osmond and I get chemistry. Yeah.
Can I also.
Say one thing that I really I struggled with too was her daughter looked about the same. Ages her and like I could not figure it out. She was at Coachella, but then she was like at some cute school camp.
School camp. It's like, is this kid?
Is this kid 12 or 18? Yeah.
And look, and if.
There is one unbelievable part of it, I mean, Anne Hathaway, like, without getting weird about it, she looks incredible, right? And there's this bit where she's, like, hanging out with these, like, younger women who are the girlfriends of the other members of the band. And she's like, oh, they're all wearing bikinis. And I feel really uncomfortable. So I'm going to wear this one piece and it's like Anne Hathaway, like, you know, you are sure you're like a slightly older at 40 and you're playing a single mom, but like, you were not unconventionally, you know, a very conventionally attractive person. But I guess maybe part of what the movie is trying to say is like, these are these insecurities that that hit women at a certain age and a certain stage of life.
I found out more about them.
I found the, um, Wikipedia like subsection for this film to be very, very, very funny. It has these two hilarious, like juxtaposed sentences. Grazia described the film as being based on Harry styles fan fiction. Vogue described the plot as a socio cultural commentary about aging and a woman's worth. And I'm like, I guess the movie's literally both of those things and kind of a decent job of both of those things.
Yeah, I mean, also, the more when I couldn't quite figure out why they were together, the and then I was like, so what's going on here? And then I was like, it's quite clear really, if you wanted to pathologize them, she's trying to recapture the youth she never had because she had kids too early. And he's got mommy issues. Right, that they explain. So I was like, maybe that's what.
Is also going on in the movie.
That's in the text.
Well, it's like not very low.
I think she's slipping. Yeah, I think.
The script is um, I think the script is interesting. I think there's a lot of layers of complexity, and maybe it doesn't all work out, because ultimately you can see maybe the writers are trying to make this a little bit more of a meditation, all of these ideas. But then Amazon's like guys, you've got like $20 million. Just shoot this thing in a weekend. Let's get this on the planes and on streamers. Let's go. You know so it's a bit of a tension there.
Yeah, I think so. And I mean, I do think it was speaking of that, it is a bit of a mish mash of those two tones, isn't it, the rom com and then the kind of quite serious study of Anne Hathaway's character.
Yeah.
It had like I think it had very like commendable aspirations to be something great. And it ended up being something pretty good.
Well, I mean, you could say that makes it a perfect case study of what we call mid tier streaming content. It's fine. It's entertaining, it's not bad, but it's not really transcendent either. And that kind of mid TV was the focus of a piece written by the New York Times chief TV critic James Poniewozik. He opened the piece by talking about Donald Glover and Maya Erskine, who wrote and starred in Atlanta and Pen15, respectively, two pretty elite, boundary pushing, critically acclaimed shows. And this year they both performed together in the Mr. and Mrs. Smith TV series reboot, which James says was fine but, you know, best suited to airplane watching something Mel would probably agree with, uh, rather than the kind of like detailed viewing that a show like Atlanta commands. You don't really want to watch it on a plane. You want to sit down and think about it and really enjoy what Donald Glover is trying to say. He goes on to talk about a bunch of shows like The Diplomat, hijack, Ozark, none of which are bad, but none of which are really going to be shows that we discuss in years down the track, even though they all star like very famous people. There's a lot of killer quotes in this piece, but this one really stood out to me. TV was so highly acclaimed for so long that we were like the frog in boiling water, but in reverse. The medium became lukewarm so gradually that you might not even have noticed. And I found that a really interesting way to describe how quickly we seem to have gone from, wow, TV is better than it's ever been. There are so many stars, there are so many budgets. This is replaced. Cinema is like the predominant form of high quality visual entertainment to oh yeah, Anne Hathaway movies. Okay, this Idris Elba Apple show is okay. It feels like a topic we talk about on this show pretty regularly. We talk about all these new shows every month. Some of them are fun, some of them are entertaining, but we end up kind of agreeing that none of them are really going to break through in the way shows like succession did a year ago. Do you guys agree with the premise of this piece? Are we living in a mid TV era?
Yeah, I think so. I mean, how often have the three of us had a conversation where we desperately crave another succession or we, you know, discuss how rare something like the bear is? I do think that it's been like a whole bunch of factors that have led to this. And I know, Mel, you hate calling anything like, you don't like the label prestige, you don't like peak, you don't like mid. But I do think that what, you know was kind of deemed the golden age of TV, with all of these movie stars rushing to do TV shows and the production value skyrocketing and and them earning more money. So more and more, um, movie stars traditionally were keen to do these. You then found yourself in this kind of like glut of TV shows starring really big names, with all these different streaming services offering all these different shows, and everyone's kind of like siloed off from each other, because not everyone has every streaming service and there's just like a constant output, which means like the quality goes down. And, you know, he makes the point in this article, which I think is really interesting, is that, like, you know, he uses the idol, a show we all know and hated together, which was so fun. But like that is such a rarity now to have a bad TV show because like there is just so much mid effort going into these other shows with good enough people behind the cameras, good enough people in front of the cameras and enough money that what you get is this kind of product that is forgettable, like the fact that, you know just this week, Nicole Kidman was, you know, honored by the American Film Institute for an incredible career. Last year, she starred in Expats and Special Ops Lioness, two shows that no one could give a fuck about. Really? Like they're fine, but they're forgettable. And you know, he talks about Idris Elba in Hijack this year. We had Jodie Foster in True Detective, like these are all fine shows, but they just like come and go. And then six months later you could barely tell someone what they're about.
Look, I understand what you're saying, and I don't mean to come back being contrarian as I feel I have been, but man, I reckon this guy just wants to be. And I call him. This guy is very esteemed. I think he just wants to be in, like the Oxford English Dictionary for coining the term mid TV. Like, that's what I reckon the play is that like critics like that love having coined a label. I don't buy the argument or I don't buy his reasoning behind the argument. He's reasoning is that we have a willingness to retreat, to settle, to trade the ambitious, for the dependable. That's what he argues that we've become safe. And I just don't buy it. Of course, there are more average TV shows. That's because we are watching so much more TV now in Australia, I think we watch like 51 hours a month, which is nearly two hours a day. If I've done my my math right there. Platforms have pressure to supply for this demand. When you're over supplying, obviously there's going to be problems with quality. Um, and they're also having a pressure to get people to subscribe based on the enormity of their catalogs. So yeah, we're going to have a lot of mid-level TV. I mean, we have the Opal tower because we needed more houses quickly. You're like, you know, you've got to have a lot of you've got to have a lot of frescoes to get the Sistine Chapel. I just don't buy his point that what it reflects. Yes, I agree there is a lot of TV that doesn't stay the test of time, but I don't buy his point that it's about a willingness to retreat, because risk only exists because you have safety like it can't exist without it, like they're in a dialogue together. And I mean, of course, he mentions The Sopranos. You guys who love your prestige TV chat like to mention The Sopranos. You know what else came out in 1999? Angel, Roswell, passion, spaced, The Lost World, popular, Bad Girls, Jack and Jill. Once and again. Do you know any of these? Some of them. But that's a whole lot of mid TV, right? Like average TV has always existed. We have more of it now because we have more TV in general. But it doesn't mean good TV doesn't exist. And I think like I think it's quite a damaging point of view and it's quite lazy criticism to kind of just throw back to nostalgia. They were better times because you're really not acknowledging all the great TV shows that we do have now that are pushing boundaries. We mention them, some of them before in the comedy section. But I mean, Baby Reindeer is another example like that is his issue is that is baby reindeer exactly what he says. We need more of its original, its provocative, and its important, so to say that those shows don't exist at all, I think is wrong. No, but.
What he's saying is that he specifically says mid TV is not the mediocre TV of the past. It's it's like a level up in that we have this ecosystem now that allows it's almost like it just like pulls this ultimate trick on everybody. It looks good, it smells good, the dialogue is good. And you are like kind of fooled into thinking that Ozark is Breaking Bad, but it's not. And so I think he's he's not saying there was not mediocre TV before, but he's saying this actual concept of mid where we are fooled into thinking something is perhaps better than it is, or we've become like conditioned to just be like, oh, this is all a pretty good is kind of specific to an environment that has come about as a result of the golden age of TV, bringing a whole bunch of big names into the mix and, you know, streamers having more money to spend but needing to spend more money to produce more content. And so we have entered into a particular time where, like, everything is just of. A similar ish level, and it maybe goes up 5% or down 5%, but nothing like sits at the very bottom or at the very top.
I think that like, I mean, a lot of what you said, Mel, in fact, most of what you said, I really agree with and I think I think one of the important distinctions to make is that I also agree with you, like the fundamental thing that I agree with you on is I don't think this is mode of TV that he's describing is reflective of us as individuals wanting it or demanding it. I think there have been quite significant structural changes to how television is made. And like you're saying, feeding the beast that force you to pump out more stuff, but more stuff that seems high quality but obviously can't be as high quality because it has to be done a bit cheaper and a bit more quickly. And I think that is how I interpreted this sort of definition of mid TV. I mean, I think Thomas listed a bunch of those shows. Kate Winslet is like on an HBO show called The Regime. Kate Winslet has been nominated for an Oscar seven times. She's won. It's just insane that, like, we live in an era where this is happening every month and I guarantee you in five years from now, we will not be talking about the regime or anything else. I think that's sort of the kind of TV frame that I'm interested in at this moment. And I think, yeah, I really agree with you that it's not because I think we as audiences aren't ready for more ideas. I think Baby Reindeer is another amazing example of that, because that is an interesting show that is risky, that is bold and weird and grim, and that was a show that was not teased by Netflix. They did not send that screeners. They did not alert critics to it. They clearly just like bought it at some point and thought, this will be interesting. Let's chuck it on to Feed the beast. But it has gone ballistic because audiences like us and like lots of people are ready for interesting, provocative, fascinating, weird, sometimes really dark shows. But that was an accident in a way. Like what these people are sitting around and, and sort of deciding they want to commission more of seems to be this pattern of does it have big name star? Does it have a credible writing team? Can we pump out eight episodes of this for less than $10 million and then do that 12 times a year? I think that is what we've ended up with television. I think streaming is a huge part of that, because I think it makes it harder for these networks. They think this goes to this risk conversation we're having earlier. They don't want to take a risk. Because if the way that we all live our lives now is we go to work, we come home, we argue with our partners about what to watch, and ultimately we just want to make sure that there's enough new stuff on every night and every weekend to binge through a show, and then do that again the next week and do that again the next week. That's how we live. Then the goal of the streamer is to maximize the volume of content that is new, that's being served up at the lowest possible cost. So I think it does exist not because we want it, but because this is where the economic structures of like TV production distribution have led us to.
Yeah, I think that's very true. And I also do wonder, like you mentioned, baby reindeer and I'm kind of am quite shocked that that has been the success it has been globally. Um, but I do wonder too, whether we are in a kind of echo chamber in a way, in the sense of what we get out of TV versus what a person who doesn't work in culture or doesn't approach TV in the same way we do get out of it like it's easy to be like there's too much TV. But for a lot of people, the Mr. or Mrs. Smith is probably exactly what they want from TV and go to TV for. And of course, other shows like The Curse and The White Lotus will always exist. But a lot of people are happy with Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
I think what worries me is that I'm not sure that shows like The Curse or The White Lotus will always exist. Like, I think, you know, one of the shows that I've loved the most this year, Ripley, which is beautiful and different and interesting, is like a legacy of the kind of TV that was being greenlit five years ago. The Sympathizer on Binge is another show that I think is amazing and different and bold, and it's Park Chan wook directing it, and it's awesome. Is that that kind of came out of the pre mid TV era, if that makes sense. When we were putting a lot more money in, a lot more thought into this craft. Like I think when we look five years from now, I think it's going to be way more of like the regime or three body problem shows that are fine, but just like not that extra little bit. And you know, you're also right. Again they're probably like what we think. And what we want is different to what a lot of people want. Like I always say, the most watched show in the history of television is The Big Bang Theory, right? Which fucking sucks. But it is also important, I think, as critics, to acknowledge that sometimes people just want to watch a dumb show because they're busy with their lives and they need something that they can sit down and watch with their families, and that's fine. And that TV needs to exist. But what TV can and should do as an art form and as a medium should be pushed into more interesting and progressive and, you know, I guess edgy, edgy ways. And that doesn't feel like there is that inertia within the current television universe to do that as much. I mean, this is a thing that I've yelled at you guys about so much before TV, its entire existence, and it's certainly for our entire lives, was shows that came out every week for like half the year. And you got to know characters, and you talked about it with your friends and new characters came in halfway through the season. Then you were off for half a season. They went back to the drawing board. They added new things. You lived with it for 4 or 5, six, seven years of your life. That's what TV was. It wasn't movies which just came. You enjoyed for two hours and then it went away. You watch these things, you talked about these things. That's the social role it played in our kind of communities. And it is not that anymore. And it's like, well, what is it now? It's just like something that should be a movie like hijack becomes an eight part Apple TV series, but something that brings you together in a way that you can discuss and debate and watch characters grow and really, like, have some kind of emotional connection to largely has disappeared because of streaming and the and the binge mode. I think the binge model is responsible for a lot of this, because you just you can't connect to characters or story in a weekend the way you could over a year. That's just a reality of it. And maybe it's pie in the sky to think that we could ever return to that. But I think we've lost like what TV was for basically our entire lives.
Yeah, but there's no way back now because the all the different styles are so fractured, like you can't, you know, I've seen other people make this comparison, but it feels relevant because it's happening right now. But like Baby Reindeer would be a bad show to not binge. I think like that. That is a show fit for binging. It's half an hour. It's it's kind of dark. You just get so sucked in that you don't want to watch one episode of that and then wait a week to watch the next one.
That also could have been a movie, you know what I mean? Like, it literally could have been like a two hour movie.
Yeah, it could, it could have been. But like, I mean, it ended up I, I almost think it was one of the rare ones where I think they actually got it just right, like it felt it felt perfect at seven episodes. And then, you know, we've all loved. Well, um, I don't know, Mel. You've kind of like, tapped out of culture completely now.
But.
We've all enjoyed Shogun, which is like probably the closest thing to what all the prestige TV heads big up to me and Osborne have been reaching for since succession ended. But that like, man, if that was like, you know, that was perfect for exactly what it was. It was week by week. And so like the TV landscape is so fractured now. Anyway, just like my friend Jerry said, that, you know, you can't have you need to have both models like coexisting at the same time. Some stuff needs to be binged, some stuff needs to be appointment viewing week by week. And like that's just how the landscape has like kind of evolved now. And so we all have to just like live with that. And I think there's no like this one is better or that one is better, but I do. I did get the suspicion as well. Like I wondered, having spoken to this about almost exclusively people that I know either work in the media, work in TV, or just really are into the industry of TV. Like, again, I don't mean to like slander my wife on this podcast for the thousandth time, but you know, she's someone who, like, I reckon half of this show, she'd be like sick, put it on like she couldn't give a fuck about, like if it's mid TV or not. Like, is this just a problem for people who are like really in.
I think it is. But I think like basically all of these conversations are right, like most people have enough to worry about than, than debating. The New York Times chief TV critics like attempt, as Mel said, to coin a term called mid TV like I think and I think this is why I think it's really important to say it is not the fault of any individual who loves watching shows that we think are like mid or even worse. I just don't think that is the solution to this. And I think we need to make sure that there are shows for all sorts of different audiences and different levels of quality, and some that are bingeable and some that are more, uh, interesting and perhaps more cerebral. But I think those decisions need to be made deliberately, not to feed a never ending sort of like fire hose of just content, because that is how streamers have optimized what they want, which is time on the app, which is what shareholders want to see. Like, I feel like the things are upside down. It's like, yeah, let's make high quality, mid quality, low quality television to satisfy different audience segments. But let's not just end up with a situation where we need to have a thousand shows a year. So what is the most cost optimized model to do that? I think you made that point really well earlier, Mel. There's just so much of it. So we're probably going to like have to deal with this in the future. But is there a case for there being less television like being made?
Yeah, definitely. And I think certain streamers will maybe settle into that because I think what you find and like I mean, it's in the book publishing industry as well. I know you guys have no doubt missed my book references is that, you know, these are companies that need to make money. They have a shareholders to make happy that you need to offset your bigger, bolder, riskier projects with some money makers. Like that's just the way the world works, right? I mean, it's not that different from journalism. You need to do some stuff so you can do the stuff that's deeply important.
Yeah. Like all of our work is basically what funds Nick McKenzie's investigative pieces. That's I.
Do the podcast so I can then do my high art.
Column on Sundays.
Yeah, we deserve the Walkley. Um, yeah, exactly. So I think, you know, you there is a I get that that stuff needs to exist. So the kind of more daring stuff like the curse can exist and I think, you know, it's ignorant to not see that that is the reality of the situation. I do think maybe some streamers, depending on how they want to approach their subscribers in the future, will probably go less, but more high quality, which I mean, HBO has largely done in the past. Fewer shows, higher quality shows, and that will become their their brand. So I think you probably will see that. I guess my main issue with this article was just the fact that I think he discredits the good shows that are being made. And yes, there are more mid shows, but the fact is like there's only more because of we're consuming more TV than we have in the past. And I don't think he really acknowledges the why the Mid exists as it does now.
I like I think I appreciate your optimism, Mel, but I feel and I'm not trying to say that you're looking at me like I'm being I'm not trying to be patronizing at all because I think I can get in my like head and be very negative about a lot of different things. So I think it is genuinely very helpful to hear someone who thinks about this stuff as much as I do say, hey, actually, just relax, man. There's like stuff going on. But I think the HBO example, like HBO doesn't exist anymore. HBO is rebranded to Max. It is a subset. Of a subset of a company that is now called discovery. Like, somehow the Discovery Channel became the biggest thing out of like, Warner Brothers and HBO and all these things merging together. And I think in some ways that is like a really perfect metaphor that this once prestigious brand that took these risks and sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't, is now just a name on a streaming platform that is a subsidiary of a giant, you know, mega corporation that doesn't really care about taking creative risks. Maybe that is doing a disservice to these to the people there. And I'm sure there are still really good network execs and programmers, but I just think that the trend is going in a direction that is taking us further away from even the shows that we think now are pretty good. And I guess what I always want to come back to is, and maybe this is just the reality of the future of how we live in terms of fragmentation. Since succession, there has not been a show that, like a lot of people watch and talk about. And. I know it's been 12 months, but like, there's been a lot of big shows. There's been a lot of attempts to do something like this. There's going to be some more later this year and next year. I like. Is that ever going to happen again?
The succession one confuses me a little, only because I do speak to a lot of people who were not as into succession as we were, and as people in the media were into succession, and they never released viewer numbers, though we know it wasn't. You know, we know it wasn't the most popular show on binge and that the numbers actually weren't as high as you mentioned. Some of the other shows, I mean, Law and Order, NCIS were still kind of far outweighing the number of people of watching succession. So, I mean, will we get and I'm sure we will get another succession. Baby reindeer is not obviously a week by week appointment viewing, but people have been talking about that. The curse had its moment. The White Lotus is going to come back. I know that that's huge in Australia. It hasn't cut through as much overseas, particularly in the UK, but here it's huge. I just got back from um, I just got back from the UK.
I've done the streets, the London streets.
I've done a survey of the population.
They're all just.
Top boy over.
There.
Yeah, I mean I do think shows will still cut through and I do think we'll have a succession again in the future. Yeah. And maybe that is my, um, post-holiday optimistic glow. But I just do think good shows still exist and we are still talking about them.
What do you think, Thomas?
Uh, no.
I think I tend to agree with you, sadly. Osman. Uh, like, I just think the way the trend is going that of course, these good shows still exist, but as the kind of like streamers get more and more of a return on, like pumping out this certain level of TV that like how frequently these good shows slip through the cracks almost and become great, uh, will become less and less, and there'll be less stuff like the, you know, the The sympathizer, the curse, the bear. Like, think about how much we all, like, frothed over the bed just because it was like this one. Like, great show that managed to kind of slip through. And it could have so easily if you if you said to someone the elevator pitch of the bear, it could sound like any other mid TV show. And so I don't necessarily think the argument is whether or not these good shows will continue to exist, but it's like, how frequently will we get them? Or will we just continue to like, be drowned out by shows that seem pretty good until. Yeah, kind of like he says, you don't even notice that the temperature has changed. Um, so yeah, I don't know. But either way, um, it's definitely an interesting conversation. And, you know, we've got between this and Jerry Seinfeld, it's like, are we obsessed with the past? Do we know what's good anymore? Like, yeah.
And we should say that, like, probably part of the reason why it exercises all of us in different ways is because it's literally our job. Right? Like every day in our jobs, we think about what TV shows or works of film or whatever do we want to talk about? What are people watching? Why aren't they watching this? What shows do we want to cover on this kind of podcast? And when you're making a podcast and you're wanting to reach as many people as possible, it's like, okay, you know, like Vanity Fair does these recap things, right? And they chose the regime because they're like, this is a big Kate Winslet show on HBO with some of the writing team from succession like, this is obviously going to bang and go, what? It totally flopped. And it's an interesting like insidery, I guess, insight into how people whose job it is is to critique and discuss culture, choose what to talk about when the market and the audience is so fragmented. So there is something that is like just very, I guess, personal to our work. But I also think audiences are interested in it because even if they don't think about it necessarily from the same perspective we do, it determines what is on their Netflix home page. It determines what shows are available for them to watch. So it is something that I think a lot of people should be engaged in. You should check out that piece in the New York Times, I think.
Absolutely. And, Thomas, your goal for the year is to coin a term that can be in the OED. I've actually.
Got one. Really? Yeah.
What curds and whey viewing. So basically. What it is is when you can't separate what's good and bad and then you shan't ever enjoy another TV show again.
I'm more of a fan of the the wheat and chaff, you know, logic around this stuff.
And there was an opal.
Tower metaphor in there somewhere as well.
The Opal tower one was very good, bringing the yimby discourse to conversations around television. Very, very good.
Um, okay.
So it's time for Impress Your Friends, a regular segment where we share something we read, watch, listen to consumed in the past week. Mel. You're back, I'm back.
You get to go first.
Guess what? I've picked a book. Yeah, I had to. I read so much while I was away. Um, usually when I go on holiday, I don't read new books. Like, it's I it's time to revisit the past. So I understand where where we're at today. Um, but I did read one new ish book, which was a psycho uzuki's best selling butter, translated by Polly Barton. It's a Japanese kind of cult best seller. Um, it's inspired by the true story of this Japanese woman who was known as the Konkatsu Killer. And she poisoned three of her male lovers. So it takes that story and it turns it into this chef, um, Nanako Kagi, who's been convicted for seducing businessmen with her cooking and then poisoning her. She's in jail. She meets up with this journalist who wants to to get a recipe, and they start a very big exchange. I love books about food, and this is about desire. An appetite. It's about beauty standards in Japan and hunger. It's a really gripping Bingeable that was Bingeable works particularly well here. Um Bingeable read. Definitely worth picking up. Good. Also good for a plane, I would say. Have you ever read Ottolenghi?
Simple.
Also a great book about food.
Yeah, it stresses me out.
Uh. Great recommendation. Thanks, Mel. Great to have you back.
Thank you. We did, we did.
We did mention books while you were away. Just for the record. You wouldn't know because you didn't listen. But we did talk a fair bit.
I'm gonna go back and listen to them all.
You're not gonna. The breastfeeding segment in particular.
Uh, Thomas, what have you got for us?
Uh, yes, I have a TV show. Is it me? Nobody knows.
Um.
Uh, no, it's actually really good. Um, it's it's here on the ABC. It's called after the party. You guys across.
This?
Yeah. Really interesting choice.
Yeah. Uh, it's. Look, I feel like lately. I mean, a couple of weeks ago, I recommended baby reindeer. Also a very heavy and triggering show. And it's kind of in the same territory in terms of, like, it's a New Zealand six parter that deals with some pretty heavy themes. It stars Robyn Malcolm in the lead as Penny. And basically, you know, she's a high school teacher in New Zealand. We meet her and we kind of learn that five years prior, at her husband's birthday, she kind of stumbled on a scene of him. It was a drunken party, and she stumbled on a scene of him, possibly what she thinks is like assaulting a young person at the party, a young man. And we flash forward five years. Her husband is kind of like left town in disgrace. Although no one really believes her side of the story. He returns home, they share a teenage daughter and the story kind of picks up from there. And it's a really interesting kind of musing on like what it's like to be, you know, someone who's accused of something that in your life changes. But also for Robyn Malcolm's character, you know, no one believes her. She lives in this kind of isolation with what she believes she saw. And, you know, at the start where kind of we're following her and we're led to believe that's what happened. But we do start to get the inkling that perhaps she's an unreliable narrator, and it covers some really interesting themes. So that's on ABC iview. All six episodes are available now.
It's a really, really good show. It's a really good show, really interesting. It's getting a lot of great reviews, a really good recommendation. I would put it above mid TV. Yes.
Me too. Yeah. Where is that mill?
Just which tower in Sydney could I compare that to?
Um, my recommendation is the Sydney Morning Herald's coverage of the implosion of the South Sydney Rabbitohs. Oh my gosh it's not. But man things are not going well. You guys across this.
Yeah man.
Obviously everything's bad Russell Crowe apparently there's factions organizing against him. So I'm going to say that like we started this downhill trajectory after we moved from Redfern to Maroubra, Heffron Park, that was not a good decision. Um, we have not done well since then. Um, that is not my recommendation. I just needed to get my feelings off on that one.
Russell Crowe's been doing a fair bit of mid work, to be honest.
I just watched I watched Land of Bad actually. And you know who has a cameo in it? George Burgess I didn't know which one he was, but I did read that he's got a cameo in it.
Land of bad is how you could basically describe his career over the last ten years.
Someone pointed out that Russell Crowe was in two movies with the word Exorcist in the title last year. It was like Exorcism and The Pope's Exorcist, and the posters of them are just him wearing like a, you know, priest's robe and holding up a crucifix.
What's happened to him, though? Because he did, and he unhinged was really weird. Land of bad, the Pope's exorcist. He has done so many shit movies.
Poker face one was that. Yeah. Or whatever. Poker.
Yeah, that was on Stan, though.
We liked that one.
We do like Stan.
Um, yeah.
And he's he's this movie Kraven the Hunter, which is like a the Sony thing which has been delayed again, I think it's supposed to come out last year and was supposed to come out this year. I think now it's coming out 2025. Uh, I just like, can this movie. Anyway, let me tell you.
Isn't he.
Can I ask, isn't he building like a film studio on the North Coast? Wasn't that what he was up to?
Yeah, yeah, on.
His farm up there. Mid-North coast near Coffs Harbour. Um, which is where he, uh, famously nine years ago took some Souths players for a let's not talk about this anymore. Um.
What's your recommendation this week?
My recommendation? So you guys know that I'm not a big Marvel head these days, but there was a cartoon show I watched in the 90s when I was a kid, which was how I fell in love with comic books. It was X-Men The Animated Series, which is really iconic kind of theme music. And it's a big part of the reason why X-Men became like a pop cultural phenomenon in that era, leading into, you know, the first Sony X-Men films with Hugh Jackman. That TV show has actually been rebooted by Disney. It's got X-Men 97. It's really interesting. It's really fun and sort of violent and thought provoking. There's a lot of analogies in this series to like January 6th and, you know, ideas around terrorism and politics. It's a really interesting show. It's doing really, really well. I think it's got a lot of fans and hype, particularly in the States. I'm just having a really good time watching it. It's like it's fun, it's thought provoking, but it's also just like a cartoon that is a bit silly at some times. So it's a very good kind of chill watch. If the grimness of Baby Reindeer and After the Party getting a bit too.
Too much for you.
A palate.
Cleanser?
Indeed, indeed.
I thought you were going to.
Pick Sabrina Carpenter's, um, espresso.
Well, I am.
Loving that song, too. So good. Sabrina Carpenter, thank God we have someone who's, like, genuinely making good pop hits when Taylor is in her fail era.
Well, can we, can we? Before we wrap things up, we didn't get to hear Merle last week on Taylor. Can you give us, like, your really quick take on the tortured poet's apartment?
Okay. Quick take. I don't think it's as bad as the critics have been ready to say. I think there's a bit of groupthink going on in the amount of critics slamming it. I definitely do not like the long version, the two hour and two minute album. I think the shorter one is good. Yes, I agree with you guys that there's a lot of it is derivative, a lot of it. I got Deja vu listening to. I was like, I've heard this, another Taylor song, but I do think there are some bangers, and I do think it is an album that rewards listening to more than once.
Name one banger.
I'm kind of down bad crying at the gym. Everything turns out teenage petulance. You know there are. And obviously the, um, do it with a broken heart. And I do think there might be a bit of disconnect between critics and her fans because her fans love this album.
Yeah, not for the first time, Mel. Yeah, thanks for that one. Great analysis from.
You. So would you say that.
It's not great, but not bad, but it's just mid.
That's don't.
Understand me or Taylor.
Well we are definitely not in our mid air. It's great to have you back Mel.
It's great to be back I've missed you guys.
Mel Thomas thanks so much. See you next week.
Thanks. Bye.
This episode of The Drop was produced by Jay Wong. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode of The Drop, make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast app. Leave us a review or better yet, share it with a friend! I'm Osman Farooqui, see you next week!
