Halt and Catch Fire
If you just looked at the originally hard-wired components of the show, Halt and Catch Fire would, rightly, be a prematurely obsolete object of mockery, sitting in a drawer, gathering dust. Originally presented as yet another period piece (this time, Texas in the 1980s) about yet another handsome white man with a dark past (this time, Lee Pace as con man Joe McMillan) trying to make his “singular vision” a reality (this time in the early computing industry), the first season of the show is largely a snooze, hitting the mostly expected beats with mostly basic competency. But the last couple of episodes of the season suggested there might be hidden depths, and the recently concluded second season proved that showrunners Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C Rogers had secretly been overseeing the sort of slow burn we associate with denser, slower streaming series.
The first 10 episodes were spent crafting characters without much plot pressure, and the second 10 rely on that foundation to produce a series of explosive, surprising moments. Now, the most important relationship on the show isn’t romantic in nature – it’s a professional bond between two women who also happen to be played by the most dynamic members of the cast. Mackenzie Davis is a raw nerve as the brilliant, idealistic programmer Cameron Howe, while Kerry Bishé provides a grounded, weary counterweight as veteran Donna Clark. The story of the show’s second season is about the pair building game company Mutiny into a smart, inventive threat, constantly on the verge of truly remarkable computing innovations while fending off external enemies, including McMillan’s accidental death touch and Donna’s husband, twitchy tinkerer Gordon (Scoot McNairy, playing a caustic, frayed wire). The male characters always vaguely threaten to swallow the show, but Halt and Catch Fire never lets you forget who the real masters are. ET
Mr Robot
The most fascinating new show of the year is also one that seems, on paper, like it should be a disaster. Mr Robot airs on the unheralded USA network (home to lightweight fare like Suits), has no recognisable stars (bar poor, forgotten Christian Slater), features that TV kryptonite, the voiceover, and is about hacking, subject matter that rarely works well in film or TV.
And yet, it’s for all these reasons and more that Mr Robot is a success. The show rarely does the expected and is wonderfully disorientating as a result. Rami Malek is utterly convincing as Elliot, a socially awkward data security expert who spends his free time snorting morphine and hacking into the online lives of those around him, helping the good ones, destroying the lives of the bad ones. This small-time hacking soon gives way to something grander when Elliot is recruited by Mr Robot (Slater), leader of a hacking collective called Fsociety, to take down a monolithic corporation.
Then things get … complicated. It would be remiss to reveal too much of what goes on Mr Robot’s first season, as so much of its appeal lies in its woozy, discombobulating quality, which the show manages to convey through everything from Elliot’s monotone narration, addressing the audience as if we’re his imaginary friend, to the strange angles of its establishing shots. Mr Robot looks to be pushing Steven Soderbergh claret-spilling hospital drama The Knick for the title of television’s most stylised drama; every shot of its first season seems meticulously staged, right down to the placement of self-consciously retro title card. That attention to detail attends the technological aspects of Mr Robot: this is that rare on-screen depiction of hacking that actually looks authentic, and its depiction of hackers – anticapitalist, angry but also idealistic – chimes with the likes of Anonymous. Oh, and poor, forgotten Christian Slater gives his best performance since True Romance. Watch it (the finale airs Wednesday at 10pm on USA). GM
Deutschland 83
Sundance TV’s sleeper hit of the summer came in the form of a cold war espionage drama that followed in the footsteps of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s the Lives of Others, and managed to achieve that film’s thematic mix of personal risk and anguish, systemic failings and debilitating attrition. If that all sounds a little glum, it (somehow) isn’t, mostly because alongside the political machinations and culture wars there’s Martin Rauch (played by Jonas Nay), who is the reluctant East German spy recruited in order to help his mother secure a much-needed transplant. Again, that hardly sounds like a laugh, but the lighter moments come when Rauch crosses into the West and discovers things such as 80s pop music and Walkmans in between bugging diplomats’ hotel suites and seducing their secretaries.
Sitting somewhere between the constant paranoia of The Americans and the slapstick piss-taking of the cold war found in Chuck Palahniuk’s Pygmy, it works because behind the heavy foreboding threat of nuclear war is Rauch’s at times brazenly ordinary coming-of-age story, which prevents it all from becoming a slog. Tense, will-he-won’t-he moments mean every episode puts something on the line, without the larger picture (the ever-present cold war and protests against the Pershing missiles) suffering for it. LB
7 Days in Hell
What if I told you that there was a short project this summer that involved Andy Samberg, Kit Harington (Game of Thrones’ Jon Snow), John McEnroe, Michael Sheen and Serena Williams? And that it was very funny? And that you probably missed it when it aired earlier this summer? That’d be HBO’s unassuming, spot-on tennis mockumentary 7 Days in Hell. Samberg (also executive producer) plays Aaron Williams, adopted brother of Serena and “bad boy” of professional tennis, while Harington takes on the role of Charles Poole, a prodigy bullied into brilliance by his mother (Mary Steenburgen) and an entire nation. These two find themselves on a convoluted collision course involving murder, Swedish prison and Queen Elizabeth II, then engaging in a week-long tennis match that devolves into several rounds of public sex, sex tapes and paternal revelations. Truly, it is the greatest, most exhausting match of all time.
The action itself, with its duelling beyond-stereotypical sports narratives, breathless gameplay, and running gags, is padded out with delightful talking head cameos from the likes of Will Forte, Lena Dunham, David Copperfield and more, each of whom play distinct, absurd, more-or-less believable characters. (Copperfield, McEnroe and several others play themselves.) There are two refreshingly fun things about 7 Days in Hell that set it apart from the rest of the summer TV landscape. First, it pretends to take itself deadly seriously – there are no winks to the camera, no nods to the fact that we’re actually seeing Andy Samberg, sitcom and movie star, and Kit Harington, Game of Thrones heartthrob, engage in a ridiculous fake tennis match. Second, it’s a scant 45 minutes, funny in a dramatic dose without locking a viewer into hours and hours of additional committed time. Oh, and did I mention that Jon Hamm narrates? ET
