Does he know how bad it is? He being Woody Allen, it being Crisis in Six Scenes (Amazon), his first foray into television since writing comedy sketches for the small screen at the start of his career.
In the first scene his character – Sidney Munsinger, a writer, a little neurotic, more than a little familiar – is having a haircut, while America in the 1960s goes on outside. We know it’s the 60s because of the opening montage of super-60s stuff: hippies freaking out, civil rights riots, anti-war marches, Jefferson Airplane, and a narrator who then says it’s the 1960s. But then a TV audience isn’t so smart – you need to shout in their ear, right?
After telling his barber that he wants to look like James Dean (ho ho) they get on to the subject of Munsinger’s work. He’s a novelist (a proper, serious art form; like a movie, say), but right now he’s working on an idea for a television series. “It’s very lucrative,” says Allen … sorry, Munsinger. “And there’s not a lot of money in novels.”
It’s clear that Munsinger is contemptuous of the medium, but is Allen saying the same? Some sort of knowing meta-joke: look at me, I’m a serious famous film-maker but Amazon gave me a bunch of money to throw out this crap?
I doubt it’s as deliberate as that, though Crisis in Six Scenes is both disrespectful and ignorant of television as a medium. If it’s not quite crap – Allen’s direction is probably the best thing about it, plus it looks nice – then it’s certainly insignificant, lazy, lame. The comedy is light and so familiar (and so not very funny); the structure is naive – not really even six scenes (episodes), more like one big one sliced into six. The 60s setting feels incidental rather than integral or even relevant.
And the acting is poor. Elaine May, playing Munsinger’s wine-swigging marriage counsellor wife, may be a slight exception. But Allen is on Allen autopilot and a fumbling failing-to-light-the-barbecue scene verges on embarrassing. Oh, and wait until episode two when Miley Cyrus swings in like a thespian wrecking ball, to smash any remnant of Crisis in Six Scenes’ credibility to pieces. That’s if you get to episode two, which you almost certainly won’t.
