It’s one of the oddest things ever seen on our screens, and it surely owes a debt to the series finale that laid the groundwork for all the experimental and baffling shows that would follow subsequently: that of the 1980s American medical drama St Elsewhere. Aliens, a T-rex, references to the “benevolent scribe” and a concluding montage set to the Beatles’ In My Life all feature. In British television, the conclusion of Byker Grove remains perplexing, as a show that had previously been a naturalistic youth drama set in Newcastle concluded with a 2006 episode, knowingly entitled Deux Ex Machina, in which the characters suddenly become aware that they are fictitious figures being manipulated by an omnipotent creator – the screenwriter – and fight back. There have been many frustratingly ambiguous or disappointing endings to popular shows – one thinks of Lost or Game of Thrones, and the last shot of The Sopranos will never cease to be debated – but it’s one thing to let down an audience, and quite another to come up with something that will be discussed in terms of awestruck surprise for decades afterwards. Recently, Brit Marling’s jaw-droppingly strange and oddly humourless series The OA concluded its first instalment by having a high school shooting foiled by interpretive dance – and it’s even weirder than it sounds on screen – and the excellent 30 Rock ended in 2013 with the (admittedly tongue-in-cheek) revelation that Jack McBrayer’s perpetually cheerful TV assistant Kenneth is, in fact, immortal. Reviews have ranged from “bizarre wildly misconceived” (Rolling Stone) to “horrifying and humanistic” (The New Yorker).īut The Curse is not the first show with a series finale that turned everything that had passed before completely on its head. ![]() Eventually, after the attempts of the local fire brigade to bring him down to earth fail, he finds himself floating off into space, ending the episode frozen as an oblivious Whitney gives birth to their son via a C-section.įor a show that has hitherto appeared to offer a naturalistic and relatively straightforward – if satirical and cringeworthy – account of the mores of modern American entrepreneurial life, it has suddenly shot off into a completely new genre, and has thereby taken its place amongst the most head-scratching series endings ever filmed. In it, Stone’s character Whitney is pregnant, and the pair are preparing for their child to be born, when Fielder’s Asher finds himself no longer susceptible to the laws of gravity and he is, in his horrified description, ‘falling up’, after a curse that he was inflicted within the first episode finally takes effect. But the unnerving spirit of David Lynch and Twin Peaks is alive and well, as can be seen by the jaw-droppingly strange finale. As one critic wrote, some of its most protracted scenes “elicit an uneasiness that makes some of The Office’s most awkward moments seem like an episode of The Repair Shop.” It is blackly hilarious at points, and Fielder and Stone have an attractively strange chemistry together. ![]() ![]() Stone is the star of the much-discussed new show The Curse, a warped black comedy revolving around the difficult relationship between a married couple who are working on a reality TV show in which they try and perform self-publicising acts of largesse for the residents of a city in New Mexico, as they attempt to conceive a child.Īs you might expect from creators Benny Safdie and Nathan Fielder, who have been collectively responsible for the anxiety-inducing Adam Sandler thriller Uncut Gems and the profoundly awkward series Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, The Curse is not interested in allowing the audience to relax. ![]() Yet she’s also been in the spotlight recently for quite another reason. Emma Stone is currently the awards-winning toast of Hollywood, with Golden Globe and Critics Circle awards for her career-best performance in Poor Things, and almost certain Bafta and Oscar nominations to follow imminently.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |