I’d never heard of this until about a year ago, but Terence Stamp in a six-part spy series based on the novels by Anthony Price? Sign me up! I’ve had it on pre-order ever since and now Network seems about ready to release it at last.
Adapted by television heavyweights Murray Smith (Strangers, Bulman) and John Brason (Colditz, Secret Army), Chessgame stars Stamp as David Audley, a university professor who covertly heads a small team of counter-intelligence agents for the British government. This stylish, intelligent and much-sought-after release features adaptations of three of Price’s novels: The Labyrinth Makers, The Alamut Ambush and Colonel Butler’s Wolf.
The wreckage of a plane that crashed 27 years ago is discovered and the Russians take an interest in its missing cargo. This makes it a priority operation for David Audley and his team – though it seems that the Soviets are willing to kill to keep their secret safe…
In the US: Mondays, 8/7c, CBS
In the UK: Not yet acquired
Just as with Happy Together, I had high hopes for The Neighborhood, once I’d seen the first episode, since it too defied expectations. It sees typical white midwesterners Max Greenfield and Beth Behrs move into a tough(ish) suburban black neighbourhood in LA. Neighbour Cedric the Entertainer isn’t too keen on having white neighbours, so generally tries to be as antagonistic as possible to them; however, the rest of his family are more open-minded, bringing it a different kind of conflict.
The first two episodes managed to do more than simply be “hey, you’re white!” and “hey, you’re black!” jokes every 10 seconds. Instead, they were surprisingly insightful looks at the differences between black and white Americans’ culture, while being almost a comedy of manners about what can and can’t be said and by whom in modern America.
Episode two also saw a potential alternative discussion point for the show, with Cedric the Entertainer the voice of tough conservative black American parenting values and Greenfield the voice of softer modern white parenting approaches. Indeed, there were times in the episode where the words black and white never even got mentioned.
There goes The Neighborhood
So it’s a shame that episode three lived down entirely to my initial expectations for the show. Greenfield stopped being an equal, more a figure of fun for everyone to laugh at. The jokes were basically “hey, you’re white!”, “hey, you’re black!” and most of the comedy revolved around the characters laughing at, not with each other. On top of that, not the slightest bit of cultural insight.
Basically, a standard CBS sitcom then. In fact, I couldn’t make it to the end of the episode, it was so unwatchably awful and standard CBS sitcom.
Which is a shame, since Happy Together showed that CBS is clearly aiming for a new, younger, gentler, more diverse market than it has been before, and I’d hoped The Neighborhood would be a good pairing with it. It isn’t.
Normally on CBS, a sitcom like Happy Together would be something to avoid. A happily married couple in their early 30s (Damon Wayans Jr and Amber Stevens West) have to deal with a young A-list celeb (Felix Mallard) moving in with them? Imagine the hijinks as they laugh at how stupid and vain he is, and how he’s always on his mobile phone! Imagine the point-scoring conversations as everyone tries to be meaner than everyone else. What larks, hey?
Fortunately, Happy Together isn’t a standard CBS sitcom and Chuck Lorre has nothing to do with it. Instead, it’s a pleasing three-hander that throws up surprisingly accurate observations about married life and growing older, with a bunch of self-deprecating, charismatic characters. Most of the comedy stems from the gulf between the self-image of people who still imagine themselves as young but are on the cusp of middle-age and the actual reality of their life, but there are just as many insights into the downside of being rich and famous.
Each episode so far has been a ‘meeting of cultures’ – if being an A-list celebratory or a 30-something married couple are cultures. Episode 1 saw our married couple learn what it’s like to be a young celeb going to parties and discover that 10pm is when the action starts not stops – and that everyone will be watching you when the action does start. It was relatively pleasing and fun, even if not totally laugh out loud.
Episode 2 saw a slight uptick in the comedy, with some genuinely good lines and good performances from everyone, as our young celeb moves in – if bringing a shoebox of goods can be classified as ‘moving in’ – and our couple learns just how much ‘stuff’ they’ve accumulated over the years. Can they be minimalist, too, or have they grown to love their things?
Meanwhile, episode 3 sees our thirtysomethings learn that the benefits of youth are about to wear off on them in terms of physical fitness and they can’t get away with not exercising any more. But will they be able to survive Mallard’s Calvin Klein underwear model fitness regime? And is giving up junk food and being in constant pain too high a price to pay to fit into those skinny jeans again? As Wayans Jr puts it, “I promised ‘in sickness and in health’ but I never realised ‘in health’ would be the bad one.”
In on the joke
Rather than being one long sneer at the characters or the standard “superior unfunny wife tuts at funny inferior husband’s little foibles” sitcom, Happy Together allows all the characters their moments to shine and is an equal opportunist when it comes to weaknesses. The characters all know their limitations and laugh along with them, too.
Wayans Jr and Stevens West are as funny as each other, get to be as silly as each other and actually have a genuine chemistry. You can well believe that these are a comfortable, happily married, well matched pair of characters with a well established Friday night routine; equally, Mallard manages to make his character charming and innocent, rather than stupid or the butt of every joke.
I found myself smiling and even laughing a lot at most of the situations the show has thrown up so far. Sure, I might not live with an A-list celeb, but the show is a perfect study of a modern marriage between two not especially hip but not totally unhip people. In many ways, it has more to say about modern relationships and family than Modern Family does these days. Give it a try.
Atrium developing: adaptations of Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac as Cyrano, with Joseph Fiennes; Hanif Kureishi’s The Body; Jane Thynne’s Clara Vine novels as Clara Vine; and supernatural thriller The Mexican Witch Hunt
