In the US: All 10 episodes available from Crackle
In the UK: Thursdays, 10pm, Virgin TV Ultra HD. Starts September 20
As Powers and Yahoo’s resurrection of Community recently showed us, the arrival of Netflix and Amazon Instant Video on the scene has forced those Internet TV providers who were formerly happy to simply chuck out short-form webisodes to leave that profitless game to YouTube and move into long-form. Crackle is the latest to join their ranks thanks to The Art of More, in which former US soldier Christian Cooke (epic sh*tfests ITV’s Demons and Starz’s Magic City) manages to parlay his skills in looting Iraqi art museums into a legit job at a posh auction house run by Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride).
Groomed (in all senses of the word, probably even the horsey ones) by Elwes to be a proper sophisticate who can tie an Oxford knot, the high-flying Cooke’s world starts to fall apart quicker than you can say, “Lady Jane! Tinker! We need a divvy!”, when one of his former Iraqi comrades sneaks into the US, bringing with him more dodgy pickings and threatening to expose Cooke’s sordid past. Things aren’t helped any for Cooke by the presence on the scene of art collector and wannabe politician Dennis Quaid (Vegas), the proud possessor of ‘f*ck off money’, and Cooke’s rival Kate Bosworth (Superman Returns), both of whom want to give him a good kicking but for different reasons.
All of which might be interesting if movie-length and chopped up into Crackle-sized 15 minute episodes. It’s certainly got good production values, has a good fight scene and could easily pass for a TNT show if you didn’t know better.
The trouble is that it’s 10x45m episodes. Even one was hard-going, because it’s not a well written show. You’re not going to learn anything about art, business, politics or anything much else from it. Scenes designed to make characters seem like they know something about art read like they’ve been cramming Wikipedia a few moments earlier.
The characters are also utterly unengaging. Cooke is not someone you especially want to route for in pretty much anything he does, but here he’s playing someone who loots museums of their precious treasures so that rich people can keep them to themselves. He’s also deploying his annoying American accent.
Elwes* at least gets to be English, but while his lips may be mouthing atrocious dialogue, his eyes are screaming “Here are the details of my bank account for your wire transfer.” You can only feel sorry for him in this.
Bosworth’s character is almost a relic from the 80s. She’s the kind of female high-flyer who’s continual outfoxed by the hero and has no tangible skills. She doesn’t even get any screentime or scenes in which she could ever reveal she had the skills claimed for her, because the show’s all about the annoying Cooke. But just as in the 80s everyone knew that was very un-PC, someone male has to explain every five minutes just how awesome she is and how she definitely didn’t sleep her way to the top… yes, I am sleeping with her but she definitely got to that position… no, her position… no! her job!… through sheer talent. How dare you think otherwise?
Quaid? He thinks he’s Robert de Niro in Casino or Michael Douglas in Wall Street. He’s actually closer to Alan Sugar in The Apprentice.
Direction is pedestrian. Editing is jarring – it sometimes feels like you’ve missed something vital. I blinked and nine months disappeared just like that. Plotting generally revolves around something looking like a better movie you once saw and the show hoping you fill in the gaps using that movie, instead of whatever’s actually on-screen.
Still, it’s free, provided you register for a Crackle account and live in the US, so criticising it too much is a bit churlish. All the same, I won’t be bothering to click the link for episode 2 anytime soon. There’s Man In the High Castle to watch instead.
Here’s a trailer. Weirdly, I was even more bored by the end of it than at the end of the first episode. I wonder if Crackle’s short-form stuff is even worse…
* For transparency’s sake, I’ll point out that Elwes is a distant relative of mine. I’m pretty sure it didn’t influence my review of this, but you must decide that for yourselves
