Marvelous Mrs Maisel season two is pure euphoria

There are some TV shows that are so joyful and fun, you can actually feel the endorphin rush. Get into it.

One of the issues with Amazon taking its sweet time launching in Australia is that its Prime Video streaming service really lags behind Netflix and Stan in terms of take-up.

But if there’s one reason to sign up for it, it’s for Marvelous Mrs Maisel. It is that good.

A joyful TV show with irrepressibly charming performances and whip-smart writing, Marvelous Mrs Maisel’s second season drops on Amazon Prime Video today and it’s even better than the first.

Yes, better than the already illustrious and Emmy-winning first season. Which makes it stupendously excellent. That might sound hyperbolic but it’s not.

In the first season, we met Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan), a Jewish Manhattan housewife in the 1950s — she’s witty, meticulous and presents very well.

Always perfectly coiffured.

Her husband Joel (Michael Zegan) has aspirations of being a stand-up comic but he’s a flack that lifts other people’s material. When he comes home and tells Midge he’s leaving her for his secretary, Midge gets drunks and finds herself in the same Greenwich Village club Joel has been bombing at.

She stumbles onstage in a booze haze and finds herself a natural in front of the mic. She’s funny — really funny. Her home truths about the expectations and absurdities of what it’s like to be a woman and a young mother (albeit, a privileged one) is raw, cutting and bloody hilarious.

The first season spent its time introducing us to the oddballs of Marvelous Mrs Maisel’s world, and established Midge’s rebellious journey to be a stand-up comic in an industry that was unwelcoming of women.

People still don’t think women are funny so you can imagine what it must have been like in the fifties. Oi.

What do you mean you don’t think women are funny?

Season two picks up right after Joel sees Midge performing onstage, baring their marital secrets to a room full of strangers for laughs. But there’s no time to go into it full-tilt because most of the first episode is an unexpected jaunt to Paris.

Midge and dad Abe (Tony Shalhoub) follows mum Rose (Marin Hinkle) to the city of lights, where the fast-talking New Yorkers are terrorising the unsuspecting Parisians, and where Midge, dragging a Gitanes, describes it as “pure hellfire”.

At the request of Amazon, I can’t say why they’re there but let’s just say it’s terrific to see Rose as a character being given more to do than histrionics — this is a woman who’s really coming into her own at last.

Later back in New York, Midge and her agent, the wisecracking Suzy (Alex Borstein) are pushing their way into the comedy scene, taking on the patriarchy, one punch(line) at a time. Midge ripping into four male comics who wrote her off was a particularly satisfying moment.

Joel, well, Joel’s still there, and the show still hasn’t quite justified why this pill of a man needs to be present other than to give the great Kevin Pollack an excuse to appear as Joel’s father.

The costume designer has outdone themselves this season

Later in the season, a trip to the Catskills and out of the city is in order and it’s amazing to see this incredible universe be expanded again. And, oh boy, do the colours pop. It’s so vivid, from the set design to the costumes to every character that walks in and out of frame.

The ping-pong dialogue is 10 per cent faster, the jokes are 15 per cent sharper and the performances are 20 per cent better. It’s the kind of momentum that builds off the back of a wonderful first season, giving everyone the confidence to go harder.

And it does, it takes it right to the edge of “too much” but because Marvelous Mrs Maisel has already won you over, you don’t care, you just bathe in its verve, and smile.

Plus, hiding within its candy-coloured, fantastical world are the hints of serious social commentary — on feminism, on the disintegration of the family unit and the social turmoil around the corner with the sixties quickly coming around. It’s what makes every joke land even harder.

Rachel Brosnahan has won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for her role as Midge Maisel

I will admit to being surprised when Amy Sherman-Palladino, the creator of Marvelous Mrs Maisel, won the Emmy for directing over Atlanta’s Hiro Murai in September.

As the creator of Gilmore Girls, Sherman-Palladino has always, rightly, been feted for her writing so the attention is always given to her jazzy dialogue and character development and not her visual style.

But if you pay attention to how she visually puts together an episode, it’s stunning and it has the same kinetic energy as her writing.

There’s a particularly striking, though fleeting, shot in the second episode of Rose in a red coat standing in front of the Musee Rodin that is breathtaking. What a way to prove you can do it all.

So do what you have to do to watch this outstanding show — sign up to Prime Video and then cancel it after the free trial if you have to — but make sure you drink it in, every moment of it, because when it comes to TV, Marvelous Mrs Maisel is pure euphoria.

Marvelous Mrs Maisel season two drops on Amazon Prime Video on Wednesday, December 6.

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