Spoiler alert: this blog contains details from the pilot episode of Sneaky Pete, which is available to view free on Amazon Prime Instant Video
In Breaking Bad, he was the one who knocks. Then, with his armful of best actor Emmys and a last-gasp Golden Globe, Bryan Cranston knocked TV on the head, cashing in on the sustained critical hoopla surrounding BB’s lopped-in-half final season to rack up some movie roles. He was a sporadic goodie in the sporadically good Godzilla update, and a roaring baddie in the roaringly bad Total Recall reboot.
Now Cranston is back on TV with Sneaky Pete. While it feels as if his return to the small screen should be a big deal, the reality is a little more mundane. Sneaky Pete isn’t so much a Cranston vehicle as Cranston’s baby: he co-created the show with David Shore (the man behind mega-hit House) and has helped to shepherd Sneaky Pete through the slings and arrows of TV development. In the pilot episode – available to watch free now on Amazon Prime Instant Video in the US, the UK and Germany – Cranston also makes a belated but impactful appearance to remind us all that Walter White knows more than a little about screen chemistry.
Cranston might attract the headlines here, but the actual Sneaky Pete is played by Giovanni Ribisi. Except he’s not really called Pete, he’s imprisoned conman Maris, who owes $100,000 to the wrong sort of people. With his release from prison looming, he urgently needs somewhere to lay low that has no connection to his previous life. After three years listening to his long-serving cellmate Pete reminisce about idyllic summer holidays on a remote farm owned by kin he hasn’t seen for 20 years, a Martin Guerre-ish idea begins to form in Maris’s mind.
On his release, he strikes out to reconnect with Pete’s long-lost grandparents to the sleazy strains of Eels’ Fresh Blood. After appearing on their doorstep, Maris ingratiates himself into the lives of a close-knit, hard-up clan that includes pensive single mother Julia (Marin Ireland, who recently turned up in Girls as Hannah’s ice-cold classmate Logan) and, rather less promisingly, a local cop. Under the homely but watchful eye of matriarch Audrey (Margo Martindale), “Pete” finds himself roped into helping out with the family business. They are veteran bail-bond agents currently short of a reliable skip tracer, so the unreformed conman becomes an apprentice bounty hunter tracking down skedaddling suspects, a task to which his shady skills are surprisingly well suited.
As pilots go, it is a hooky concept with – and you suspect the House-y influence of Shore here – an easily repeatable procedural element: Pete and Julia could chase down a different fugitive each week, while the burning fuse of Maris’s grand deception sparks ominously in the background as he grows ever-more attached to his surrogate family. A solid framework, then – and Ribisi is surprisingly good. Despite his varied career, he is still remembered as Phoebe’s oddball brother Frank Jr in Friends, and, for a long time in movies, he seemed typecast as the pathetic little brother who gets in over his head and has to be bailed out by more capable outlaws, such as Nicolas Cage or Mark Wahlberg.
But, in Sneaky Pete, Ribisi finds a natural outlet for his slightly ratty, fast-talking energy – being a successful con artist sometimes involves making the mark feel sorry for you, or superior, and he plays it beautifully. Maris is instinctive, street-smart and even capable of being suave, but once each of his impromptu performances is over, his features set into something a little sadder – and that’s even before he finds out that the brother he left behind is potentially at risk if he can’t come up with the money he owes.
Will we get to see any more of Sneaky Pete? If Netflix’s preferred model is to release an entire season in one big binge-worthy batch whether it was asked for or not – and did anyone really want a third season of Hemlock Grove? – Amazon’s forays into original programming have so far favoured the traditional pilot method. Sneaky Pete was originally developed at CBS before Amazon scooped it up, and while it has launched it with a decent fanfare – alongside another pilot, the Diego Luna-starring period romp Casanova – it will depend on Amazon Prime subscribers watching, rating and reviewing favourably, and in decent numbers, before there’s even a chance of it going to a series. Even with Cranston’s considerable rep behind it, the fate of Sneaky Pete will be decided by cold, hard data – and even the talented Maris can’t con an algorithm.
Will you be watching the Sneaky Pete pilot? Let us know in the comments below
