Is it a propitious time for an adaptation of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22? Is there anything about the current socio-political landscape that might make resonant a televisual take on the spikily satirical novel whose title is synonymous with absurd, contradictory choices forced upon people by institutions that seem to have taken leave of their senses? I just don’t know.
Here we are, anyway, with Hulu’s original six-part series, executive produced and part-directed by George Clooney who also plays the volatile General Scheisskopf, now presented for our viewing pleasure/as another shove towards the cliff edge of despair. Think of it as a bitter Biloxi Blues, or a torqued M*A*S*H and you won’t go far wrong.
Our first sight of John Yossarian (YoYo), whose ability to see through the farcical nature of the military and attempts to avoid the potential tragedy of its outcome form the spine of the book and series, is of him emerging naked and bloodied out of a riot of flames and smoke and roaring at the sky. Then we flash back two years to his training as part of a bomber crew – he chose it because it was the longest and he hoped the war would be over before he had to fly – at the Santa Ana airbase. This mostly involves being yelled at in increasingly convoluted fashion by Gen Scheisskopf and being put on punishment detail whenever his friend Clevinger can’t resist answering Scheisskopf’s spittle-flecked questions. “It’s rhetorical!” YoYo murmurs desperately out of the side of his mouth as his eager compatriot throws up a hand to explain why the platoon is so bad at drill. Not that YoYo’s own decision to drill the general’s wife appears particularly politic, but war is hell and you take your pleasures where you can.
His repeated attempts to swing the lead are defeated by Doc Daneeka (Grant Heslov, who also directs some episodes) who tried to certify himself 4F (not fit for service); “You’d think my word would be enough, but no! They send some guy from the draft board to look me over … It’s really a terrible thing when the word of a licensed small town medical practitioner is questioned by the country he loves”.
It is Daneeka who explains the eponymous catch to YoYo; anyone who has the sense to try and get out of flying combat missions is by definition sane and must fly. Anyone who wants to shouldn’t be flying, but they have to ask for exemption and won’t. And if they did, they would be considered sane enough to…you get the picture. “That’s some catch, that catch-22,” says YoYo. “It’s the best there is,” the good doctor replies.
Things worsen when, after YoYo being shipped out to Italy and flying nine of his 25 required missions, new commanding officer Colonel Cathcart (a terrifying, rollicking turn from Kyle Chandler) keeps increasing the quota. His military fervour is untrammelled by the apathetic Major de Coverley (our very own Hugh Laurie, free to let his bald spot show now that he no longer has to play oblique sex symbol Dr Gregory House), who rouses himself from torpor only when an entrepreneurial mess officer brings him toothsome supplements to his army rations. Men are ceaselessly themselves, is the message: lazy, venal, inoffensive, hustling, passive and all points in between. There is nothing ennobling about war.
It looks great – the arid palette relived occasionally by the blue of the Italian coast as the men swim between raids – and the cast is top flight. Clooney got the project greenlit (and then co-directed) but is slightly miscast in his role – too inescapably intelligent and twinkly-keen-eyed to convince as a military moron – but it’s far from a main part and he gets away with it. The rest – especially Christopher Abbott as YoYo, whose natural intensity works perfectly with the grain of an endlessly frustrated character congenitally incapable of giving himself up to become an anonymous cog in a larger machine – are brilliant.
The only potential problem, beyond whether it actually has anything new to tell us about our predicament rather than simply resonating with it, is Catch-22’s own catch-22 – how to keep up the pace and energy of an essentially nihilistic drama; a study in the meaningless and futility of war and, ultimately, life? The detail and stylistic verve that keep you going through the book are quickly eaten or flattened by television. But we can hope for the best while we prepare for the worst. We are, after all, getting quite good at that.
