Gilmore Girls and Marvellous Mrs. Maisel creators return with new ballet series

Etoile ★ ★ ★

From Emmy Award-winning husband-and-wife creative team Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, Etoile (French for “star”) is a comedy-drama set in the world of elite ballet that aims to do for dance what their previous hit The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel did for the early days of stand-up comedy. The pair’s first collaboration was the long-running Gilmore Girls, to which there are also similarities.

Luke Kirby plays Jack, head of a New York ballet company, in Etoile.

The series follows two of the world’s top ballet companies – Paris and New York – both of which, as with many in real life, are struggling to remain profitable or relevant. To try and shake things up, the director of the New York company, Jack McMillan (Mrs. Maisel’s Luke Kirby) and Paris director Genevieve Lavigne (French singer/actor Charlotte Gainsbourg) agree to trade their top dancers in the hopes of bringing in new audiences.

“The audience is dead, so is the funding. The seats are empty,” declares Genevieve early on, before reluctantly agreeing that “fresh faces” might help generate interest (in 2009, a real-life exchange happened between the two cities).

“A lot of our dancers have abandoned toe shoes for TikToks,” she adds, “and the dressing rooms are filled with screaming babies and asshole rescue dogs.”

But nobody is happy with this cultural exchange, particularly Jack (whose snarky exchanges with Genevieve suggest they have been more than just colleagues) but most of all the dancers themselves.

Lou de Laâge as the fiery French star Cheyenne in Etoile.

As well as egos and (literal) prima donnas, both companies feature their share of quirky characters, among them the (cartoonishly) tempestuous French star Cheyenne (Lou de Laâge), who rails passionately against almost everything, and spends her spare time fighting against illegal fishing and other environmentally unsound activities. Then there’s highly sensitive, presumably neurodiverse American choreographer Tobias (Gideon Glick, Mrs Maisel’s Alfie – there’s a lot of crossover from the Sherman-Palladino “universe”; Gilmore Girls′ Yanic Truesdale also stars), who can’t begin creating until he has the correct toothpaste.

As well as ego clashes, backstabbing and creative differences (on stage and behind the scenes), there are the expected culture shocks for members of both companies. Etoile definitely veers into Emily in Paris territory even if, early on, someone makes that very quip. There are many quips; in typical Sherman-Palladino/Palladino style, there’s rapid-fire banter and witty insults – though never too nasty – flung about.

But the performance scenes in Etoile lend the series an extra air. Many in the cast are real-life ballet professionals, among them New York City Ballet principal dancers Unity Phelan and Tiler Peck and Boston Ballet principal dancer John Lam, while some of the main stars also took daily ballet lessons (although they still required doubles).

Yanic Truesdale as Raphael and Charlotte Gainsbourg as Genevieve.Credit: Philippe Antonello/Prime Video

It’s not the first time the Mrs Maisel team has tackled dance as a drama setting – in 2012 the pair created the short-lived Bunheads, but that was more of a family affair than Etoile, and didn’t enjoy such a lavish budget.

Filmed in Paris and New York, the series looks gorgeous (thankfully Paris is not reduced to its usual cliche), capped off by Emmy-winning costume designer Donna Zakowska’s output – she created more than 200 tutus for the eight-part series, which features lengthy dance sequences ballet buffs will love.

Etoile is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

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