THE MORNING LIST
Do not throw any more, it’s the avalanche. And the long weekend ahead will not be too much to take a look at some titles from this selection as rich as it is varied.
“Borgen, Power and Glory”, season 4: Sidse Babett Knudsen breathes new life into Birgitte Nyborg
The praises burst out when we evoke the memory of Borgen, a woman in power, broadcast in France on Arte ten years ago. Sometimes described a little too quickly as the best series in the world, it at least had the interest of making known outside the borders of the kingdom the high quality of Danish series, whose almost standardized model – no more than three seasons – was then to inspire many of channels and showrunners. The success of the series also served as a career accelerator for Sidse Babett Knudsen. The Danish actress thus appeared in the credits of Westworld, a grandiose dystopian series broadcast on HBO, and won a César for her role in L’Hermine, alongside Fabrice Luchini.
Taking advantage of the “revival” fashion, the Danish public channel DR1 offers the character of Birgitte Nyborg a second life, still under the pen of screenwriter Adam Price, but whose international distribution is, this time, provided by Netflix. Times have changed: now Minister of Foreign Affairs, the former head of government lives alone and has little taste for acting under the control of Signe Kragh (Johanne Louise Schmidt), the charismatic Prime Minister. When Greenland announces major oil discoveries, Birgitte Nyborg thinks of taking the opportunity to come back to the fore by opposing its exploitation.
If the era is no longer the same – and the series skilfully takes note of this –, little has changed in the workings of Danish democracy and the plots of this new 8-episode season do not always shine with their sophistication, but it would take a lot more to spoil the pleasure of this perfectly mastered reunion. Audrey Fournier
“The Boys” Season 3: Superheroes Are Depressing
To the multinationals who preside over the cult of superheroes, The Boys continues (with the support of one of these multinationals, Sony, the house of Spider-Man) to oppose a string of blasphemies. This third season flirts with provocation – a little more gore, a little more depravity – but stays the course. It is no longer a question of demonstrating that superheroes are narcissistic, power-hungry monsters, since the first two seasons have taken care of that. This time, Eric Kripke sets out to calculate the ethical cost of the fight that the group of not very super heroes dubbed The Boys delivers against Homelander (evil caricature of Superman) and his clique. In view of the first five episodes of season 3, The Boys manages, once again, to marry the excess of the situations and the complexity of the reflection, all at a frantic pace. Thomas Sotinel
“Physical”, season 2: Murray Bartlett joins the gym
Back in great shape on Apple TV for the housewife turned aerobics teacher embodied by the excellent Rose Byrne. Set in San Diego in the 1980s, the series created by Annie Weisman (and whose Craig Gillespie had signed the pilot) returns for a second season, which sees Sheila (Rose Byrne) promoting a video partly copied from the exercises by her ex-friend Bunny, while vaguely trying to save her marriage to Danny (Rory Scovel).
The season benefits from the entry on the scene of a serious media competitor in the person of Vincent Green, charismatic fitness coach interpreted with a devastating charm by Murray Bartlett (The White Lotus). The 10 episodes of the season continue to describe with finesse devoid of any nostalgia the hypocrisy of those years, all of them turned towards business and success, including women encouraged to trade a form of slavery (the home ) for another (the gym). Less surprising than the first season, this one remains carried by the tense energy of Rose Byrne and by the excesses of Murray Bartlett, an irresistible duo. At. f.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi”: A Promising Hyphen Between “Revenge of the Sith” and “A New Hope”
The first two episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi are preceded by a prologue that draws on the plot of the second Star Wars trilogy, the one that saw the transformation of Anakin Skywalker into Darth Vader. Ten years after the defeat of the Jedi Order, we find the protagonist in exile on Tatooine, where he keeps an eye on the young Luke Skywalker. Ewan McGregor, who takes over the role, composes an endearing variation on the theme of the tidy vigilante of cars, forced out of retirement to come to the aid of Princess Leia, a mischievous child kidnapped by mysterious mercenaries.
This link between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope quickly takes an intriguing turn: the old Jedi is forced to leave the sands of the planet Tatooine, which served as the setting for the previous series, his path crossings as many veterans of the second trilogy (Jimmy Smits, Joel Edgerton) only promising new characters. In the respective roles of a ruthless inquisitor and a sympathetic con artist, Moses Ingram and Kumail Nanjiani immediately find their place in the family album. If the following episodes continue at this level, Obi-Wan Kenobi could be the new Star Wars that we have been waiting for since the release of Return of the Jedi. T.S.
“Super Pumped. The Dark Side of Uber’: Fallen Unicorn Feature Series
The latest in a wave of series about fallen tech giants (to varying degrees), Super Pumped is aptly titled. Overwritten, overacted, overfilmed in certain aspects, this new anthological series displays ambitions equal to the neuroses of the main character of its first season, Travis Kalanick. Having become the symbol of a sector that by dint of seeking “disruption” forgets the basic rules of business, the VTC Uber platform has also suffered from the whims and megalomania of its co-founder.
Like WeCrashed and The Dropout, the series developed by Brian Koppelman and David Levien relies on the narcissism of a brilliant and visionary entrepreneur to explain the financial and legal blunders that nearly sent Uber, the first of the “unicorns”, right into the wall. And who cost his place to Kalanick, fired from the head of Uber, as were Adam Neumann (WeWork) and Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos).
Sticking closely to its program, Super Pumped delivers an energetic but unqualified description of a corporate culture that is infantilizing, testosterone and disconnected from reality. The demonstration is not uninteresting, but it remains quite academic, especially since the series suffers from the comparison with more effective previous productions. There is no bias in Super Pumped comparable to the dark humor of WeCrashed or the psychological finesse of The Dropout. And Joseph Gordon-Levitt struggles to deliver a performance as captivating as that of Jared Leto or Amanda Seyfried. At. f.
