Watchlist: Cannes darling Xavier Dolan makes his small screen debut with The Night Logan Woke Up
At just 34, the divisive Quebecois director Xavier Dolan has eight films under his belt, now he’s turning to the small screen.
The Night Logan Woke Up
SBS on Demand
Love him or hate him, one can’t deny the work ethic of Xavier Dolan. At just 34, the divisive Quebecois director and darling of Cannes has eight films under his belt — including Mommy, which shared the Jury Prize with Jean-Luc Godard in 2014. The Night Logan Woke Up is his first foray into television, and potentially his last project for the foreseeable future — he hinted at taking a break from filmmaking last year. The five-episode miniseries in which Dolan directs, writes, and stars is a decades-spanning tale about the dysfunctional Larouche family. The story centres on four siblings, each burdened with trauma from a family secret that revolves around a single night in 1991. After the death of their mother, the children are reconciled, and old wounds are reopened. It’s Dolan’s second adaptation of a stage play from Michel Marc Bouchard (following 2013’s sick psychological thriller, Tom at the Farm). In the way of mysteries, the show fails to deliver that gratifying final punch. If you’re a fan of Dolan’s style — this is him playing the hits. Plus there’s an exquisite Hans Zimmer score to boot.
Brideshead Revisited
Britbox
It’s a classic. It’s been more than 40 years since Charles Sturridge’s stately, slow-burning 13-episode serialisation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel first aired, and it still looks sensational. More so now than ever, with Britbox’s welcome 4K remastering. A dazzlingly handsome young Jeremy Irons made his star-making turn as Charles Ryder, a perpetually glum, disenchanted painter in a perverse but delicately depicted love triangle with two siblings: Sebastian Flyte (Anthony Andrews), an effete, petulant eccentric; and his melancholy sister Julia (Diana Quick). There is so much to love about this series: posh people problems, Catholic guilt, thrilling location shots in settings like Castle Howards; a Geoffrey Burgon score; and a cast rounded out by the likes of Claire Bloom, John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier.
I Love Dick
Prime Video
It’s crazy that a book like this made it to television, crazier still that it works so well. The show is director Joey Soloway’s follow-up to the excellent Transparent. It is an adaptation of the seminal, cult novel I Love Dick, a semi-autobiographical work by Chris Kraus, which was composed of unhinged, obsessive, lustful, one-sided letters to a real life media scholar Dick (Hebdige, of Subculture: The Meaning of Style fame). In the show, the always-great Kathryn Hahn plays Chris, a flailing indie filmmaker, who accompanies her husband Sylvere (Griffin Dunne), a Holocaust scholar, to the highbrow art enclave of Marfa, Texas. Sylvere has a summer residence under the artist Dick (Kevin Bacon), who, in Soloway’s adaptation is based on the minimalist sculptor Donald Judd. Dick, we learn, has a nature true to his name. Over an excruciating dinner scene, he declares “I think it’s really pretty rare for a woman to make a good film.” This sparks fury in Chris, that turns into psychosexual obsession.
Maid
Netflix
Inspired by Stephanie Land’s best-selling memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, this series tells the story of the 25-year-old aspiring writer, Alex (Margaret Qualley), who with her two-year-old daughter, Maddy, flees an abusive relationship to start a new life. Abandoned by a flawed welfare system, she must navigate the treacherous maze of poverty and single motherhood, caught in the frustrating paradox of needing childcare to secure employment and requiring a job to access childcare. Eventually, she manages to secure work scrubbing toilets — but it’s hardly enough to make ends meet (Alex’s mental calculations about whether she has enough to pay for groceries or petrol flash up on screen). To add to her woes is her “batshit crazy”, free -spirited mother, played with sparkling intensity by Qualley’s real life mum, Andie MacDowell. Maidhad the potential to be a great drama, but it suffers from Netflix’s tendency to overindulge cliche and episode count. Stretched across an unwieldy 10, hour-long instalments, Maidoverstays its welcome, and dilutes the impact of its otherwise poignant narrative.
Warnie
Channel Nine
Sunday, June 25 and Monday, June 26
Fifteen months after Shane Warne’s death, Channel Nine has hastily stitched together a miniseries about the spinbowling legend. The biopic will air over two nights (Sunday, June 25 and Monday, June 26), and explore the cricketer’s life on and off the field. Spanning a quarter of a century, the series will touch on the darker chapters of Warne’s saga — the betting scandal, the substance abuse charge (which he attributed to weight-loss pills), the recurring sex scandals, and his high-profile affair with model Liz Hurley. Actor Alex Williams, whose first major screen role was playing a teenage Julian Assange in the all-but-forgotten movie Underground, assumes the role of Warne. Upon Nine’s announcement of the production, Warne’s eldest daughter, Brooke, slammed the Network in an Instagram post, writing: “Do any of you have any respect for Dad or his family? You are beyond disrespectful,” she wrote. It feels wrong to make an unfavourable judgment of a film one hasn’t seen; that said, if the trailer is anything to go off, we’re preparing for a schlockfest.
