Drama-plagued sitcom Carol’s Second Act worth a new look

The drama-plagued sitcom Carol’s Second Act is worth a new look

Sabrina Jalees, left, Jean-Luc Bilodeau, Patricia Heaton and Lucas Neff in Carol’s Second Act, which was abruptly cancelled.

Eddie Cockrell picks the Free-to-air, Pay TV and Streaming highlights this week.

-

Free-to-air

The half-hour American situation comedy, if well-written, shrewdly cast and snappily performed, can be a thing of beauty and a joy forever — or at least well into the lucrative afterlife of syndication.

The one and only 18-episode season of the CBS All Access sitcom Carol’s Second Act, while perhaps not possessing the increased mirthful loveliness of Frontline or Seinfeld, is far better than an abrupt cancellation would suggest.

That the show’s swift demise came at least in part through potentially incendiary off-screen conflict is even more reason to sample it, and perhaps to hope that it won’t, as has been the sad fate of many a lesser comedy, pass into the eternal nothingness of cancellation hell.

“Hospitals are hotbeds for gossip and disease,” someone says in the show’s final episode, which airs 10 weeks from now. “But mostly ­gossip.”

Much of the scuttlebutt in the halls of the fictitious Loyola Memorial Hospital revolves around Dr Carol Kenney, who is played by veteran TV presence Patricia Heaton with the patented sensitive chutzpah that won her two Emmys for CBS’s Everybody Loves Raymond opposite Ray Romano and another nine years as midwestern battler Francis “Frankie” Heck in the ABC sitcom The Middle.

Divorced with two grown children (one of whom, Ashley Tisdale’s Jenny Kenney, is a pharmaceutical rep), Kenney was a high school science teacher but now, in her early 50s, is by far the oldest intern in her class.

Under the supervision of by-the-book chief resident Dr Maya Jacobs (Ito Aghayere), she’s competing with well-connected Dr Caleb Summers (Lucas Neff), insecure Harvard grad Dr Daniel Kutcher (Jean-Luc Bilodeau) and Dr Lexie Gilani (Sabrina Jalees), the first in her family to attend college, for the approval of senior attending physician Dr Stephen Frost.

In the often surprising world of situation comedy casting, this authority figure is played with avuncular grace by no less a cultural touchstone than Kyle MacLachlan, who, in a parallel universe, starred for fellow Pacific Northwesterner David Lynch in Dune, Blue Velvet and the Twin Peaks franchise.

In this week’s eighth episode, fellow sitcom mother, wife and wiseacre Jane Kaczmarek (Malcolm in the Middle) plays a friend of Carol from her teaching days who waxes poetic about her life in retirement and has Carol questioning her own choices, while a particularly cranky patient, played by immediately recognisable character actor Alan Blumenfeld, pushes all her buttons.

An even more famous guest star appears in that final episode’s narrative cliffhanger, which will now go unresolved unless another network picks up the show.

As a New York Times article tells it, Heaton’s husband, an executive producer on the show, was accused of sexual harassment by two of the program’s female writers.

He denied it, their access to the set was restricted and the writers, one of whom also directed this episode, left the series.

“None of this had to happen,” one of the writers said, but it did, and now Carol’s Second Act is, regrettably, its last.

Carol’s Second Act, Thursday, 11pm, 10 Peach, 10 Play.

-

Bites

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
Sunday, 8.35pm, NITV and SBS On Demand

US documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who first came to prominence with the nine-episode TV series The Civil War in 1990, turned his attention 15 years later to boxer Jack Johnson. Known as the “Galveston Giant” after his Texas birthplace, Johnson was the first African American world heavyweight champion from 1908 to 1915. “For more than 13 years,” Burns says, “Jack Johnson was the most famous and the most notorious African American on earth. Transcending boxing, he became part of the culture and the history of racism in America.” As with Burns’s most important work, Unforgivable Blackness is immersive, clocking in at just under four hours. It employs his distinctive use of vintage photographs in its telling of Johnson’s fierce determination to live free in a difficult time. It helps that Jackson’s career coincided with the birth of motion pictures, so his fights are well-documented. His journey makes for a revelatory and still timely story.

Ross Noble: El Hablador
Saturday, 8.30pm, ABC Comedy

“It’s always nice to look out early on,” England-born Melburnian Ross Noble says early in his act, referring to the distinctive brand of improvisational performative vigour that can be, how shall we say, surprising to newcomers, “and see who’s bought a ticket and who’s been brought by a friend”. Yes, the Randomist has returned, here in a series of two live gigs from an incredible 68 dates on his 2018 El Hablador tour aired on consecutive Saturdays. From the moment he crawls out of the mouth of a large inflatable skull — for some reason, it’s a vague Mexican Day of the Dead theme — it’s game on for this manic fan favourite. About those skulls: “The sets have always been a bit Spinal Tap,” he told one interviewer at the time, “There’s no need for them, it’s just funny to have these big, over-the-top creations onstage. People turn up and go ‘Whoa!’ and then I don’t really mention it.” He talks of glitter factories using the bones of Liberace, dead mermaids, Johnny Depp’s perfume advert and duelling Lauras + all in the first 15 minutes. He thinks “surreal” a lazy description, but it’s apt.

Watergate
Sunday, 8.40pm, SBS and SBS On Demand

This six-part 2018 documentary bears the subtitle Or: How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President, which is timely enough in the run-up to this year’s US presidential election. Director Charles Ferguson, who won an Oscar in 2011 for Inside Job, the Matt Damon-narrated documentary about the 2008 global financial meltdown, decided to do his version of the much-told story because existing media on the subject had never “properly been done”. Last week’s double episodes covered the initial break-in at Washington’s eponymous hotel and the first manifestations of a cover-up. Now, in parts three and four, low man on the White House totem pole John Dean is granted immunity, and special prosecutor Archibald Cox is fired by president Richard Nixon. The extensive dramatic re-creations initially are startling but do a vivid job of reconstructing the sweaty, smoky skulduggery of the Nixon White House, while the wealth of vintage television and newsreel footage returns viewers to a tumultuous American decade. Watergate may be seen in its entirety via the SBS On Demand service, and it remains a diverting cautionary tale about hubris, paranoia and the dangers of self-absorbed presidential politics.

-

Pay TV/Streaming

Jeffrey Dean Morgan, left, and Norman Reedus in The Walking Dead.

When the undead multiply

The credited creators of the third series in The Walking Dead franchise, subtitled World Beyond, are Scott M. Gimple, who rose from original series showrunner to chief content officer of the entire post-apocalyptic horror television universe, and long-time original series writer Matthew Negrete, who also serves as this series’ showrunner. The show’s brief seems obvious: to open the concept up to a fresh generation of viewers. Anchored in the first three of 10 episodes made available for preview by the compelling performance of 21-year-old Sydneysider Hal Cumpston as the troubled American teenager Silas, the creators’ instincts thus far seem to be spot-on, suggesting they’re on the right track to serve the young adult audience they’re looking for to inject new blood into a dangerously anaemic concept.

In rural Nebraska, a large group of the uninfected has survived the zombie apocalypse and, a decade later, has created Monument, a safe, fortified haven with a semblance of normalcy. Teenager Iris Bennett (Aliyah Royale) is well-adjusted yet resentful her father has been sent to New York in a trade with one of the other compounds eking out an existence under the umbrella of the secretive Civic Republic Military. Iris’s adopted sister Hope (Alexa Mansour) is far more rebellious and thus easily talked into striking out for the northeast to learn of his uncertain fate. Along for the journey is the diminutive yet determined Elton (Nicolas Cantu), who promises to use his black belt in karate to protect them, and Cumpston’s Silas, whose apparently violent history dictates that he’s searching for redemption or control.

This world is not bereft of adults, with those in pursuit of the quartet including romantically involved Monument security officers Felix (Nico Tortorella) and Huck (Annet Mahendru) and senior CRM official Elizabeth Kublek (veteran English actress Julia Ormond).

In keeping with the needs, wants and cautions of that YA demographic, World Beyond lays on the gruesome make-up effects, complex interpersonal relationships and the overarching “I-got-your-back” philosophy of the extended family, while soft-pedalling the more graphic violence for which the show is known. Although perhaps too obvious in its strategies for the veteran Walking Dead viewer, World Beyond thus far points confidently towards a new generation of survivors.

Meanwhile, as even the most casual fans of the main show will attest, it has been a long wait for the season 10 finale. The hour had finished shooting before the pandemic, and the official reason given for its delay was some particularly complicated special effects and post-production work. The delay is borne out and justified by the climactic set piece, which won’t be spoiled here but provides somewhat of a breather for the hardy souls who have escaped the hospital and are attempting to elude the vast horde of walkers and Whisperers summoned by the now-demented Beta (Ryan Hurst).

Of the fates befalling Daryl (Norman Reedus) and Carol (Melissa McBride), there’s clarity, as both actors will appear in a spin-off show of their own in three years.

As for the remainder of the now-sizeable cast, who survives for the upcoming 11th and final season is a matter of fate, chance and strategic planning.

Word has it The Walking Dead: A Certain Doom will be added to Binge about 1pm AEST on Monday, with new weekly season six episodes of Fear the Walking Dead beginning October 12. In the interim the seasons of both shows are available now to stream in their entirety.

The long process of baton-passing from one generation to another will undoubtedly be tricky, and the best that we can hope for is that a series of shows about the ultimate in post-apocalyptic survival can itself survive stagnation and complacency.

The Walking Dead: World Beyond, streaming on Amazon Prime Video; The Walking Dead: A Certain Doom, Monday, streaming on Binge.

-

Bites

Foxtel school holiday programming
Streaming on Foxtel Now

Among the pandemic strategies deployed by creative cable providers to capitalise on the massive numbers of potential subscribers who find themselves homebound these past few months is a smorgasbord of online programming organised by both audience and theme. Younger viewers with access to Foxtel and no appetite for the undead are still spoiled for choice. There are films, of course, including such recent family fare as The Secret Life of Pets, Minions, Kung Fu Panda and the like. All 10 seasons of the cherished American sitcom Friends is available, as are popular stand-bys Seinfeld, Big Bang Theory, Silicon Valley and others. For adults on staycation, series fare includes Lambs of God, Big Little Lies, Scandal, and, on the Box Sets channel, the recent documentary crime comedy McMillions, the serial killer investigation I’ll be Gone in the Dark, both seasons of Ice, Sharp Objects, and the recent multi-Emmy-winning Watchmen.

I May Destroy You
Streaming on Binge

On the strength of two passionately received shows which she created and starred in, London-born actor, screenwriter, director, producer and singer Michaela Ewuraba Boakye-Collinson, known professionally as Michaela Coel, is a powerful onscreen presence and off-screen social voice. It’s fair to say she is one of the most high-profile women currently working in episodic television. She first came to attention with two series of Chewing Gum (2015-2017), the British sitcom she adapted from her 2012 play Chewing Gum Dreams about 24-year-old deeply religious virgin Tracey Gordon (Coel) and her sincere yet consistently outrageous efforts to become, shall we say, more worldly. “I enjoy making people uncomfortable,” Coel told a journalist between seasons. This wish extends to her latest show, the nominally autobiographical I May Destroy You, in which her novelist character Arabella deals with the fallout of a night on the town she can’t remember and a possible sexual assault. Coel famously turned down a million-dollar offer for the show from Netflix in order to retain creative rights and control of her work. Blessed with a seemingly fearless ability to wring honest comedy from societal tragedy, Coel has emerged a strong voice in a confused time.

The World’s Smallest Woman: Meet Jyoti Monday, 9.30pm, TLC

Fans of the long-running and consistently popular anthology series American Horror Story will recall that in its 2014 fourthseason sideshow owner Elsa (Jessica Lange) presides over a group of biological rarities struggling to survive in rural 1952 Florida as a carnival attraction in the dawning age of television. Among the group is the ubiquitous yet ultimately doomed fan-favourite Ma Petite, who was played by the Guinness Book of Records holder for smallest woman in the world at 62.8cm, 26-year-old Indian-born actor Jyoti Amge. “I am very low,” she says, early in this hour-long 2020 Discovery/The Learning Channel documentary on her recent trip to Pittsburgh seeking medical help for long-time leg fractures. “The whole world is above me.” Yet she’s referring to distance and not mindset, displaying a winning, wide-eyed innocence tempered with a steely resolve to experience as much of the world as she can on her own terms. “Even your resting bitchface is adorable,” says American Horror Story castmate and now close friend Erika Ervin.