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Post by mllemass on Oct 26, 2020 11:52:42 GMT
Thanks for posting that interview! I really miss those guys and I’m looking forward to seeing them again when the series returns.
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Post by MagdaFR on Jan 20, 2021 23:52:24 GMT
Season 4 is on Netflix tomorrow.
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Post by sgev1977 on Jan 21, 2021 2:28:07 GMT
That's great! Thanks!
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Post by mllemass on Jan 21, 2021 3:02:20 GMT
Yay! I just checked, and it’s coming here, too!
And just in time - I was wondering what to watch next. Just tonight I finished watching Seachange on Acorn TV. (I enjoyed it, but I’m skipping the reboot they did 20 years later. I don’t like the new characters)
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Post by mllemass on Jan 25, 2021 1:15:34 GMT
I finished watching it today. It’s still as good as the previous seasons! These new episodes might have a more frantic pace - just when you’re breathing a sigh of relief that everything has worked out, everything suddenly falls apart. And when you think you know the good guys from the villains, you’re wrong!
The end felt like the end of the series, but I hope they return and do more.
(There was an interesting storyline where they discussed whether a new movie should be released on Netflix. Of course, Netflix is showing this series, so I wondered whether Netflix had to approve the story?)
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Post by sgev1977 on Jan 26, 2021 2:24:15 GMT
I just finished it, too. I read somewhere it's indeed the last series which it's interesting because it kind of ends with the bad guys (well, the bad woman!) winning but even if the format is classical sitcom this is not Hollywood, right?
There was an interesting review on the NYT that said this was great because it doesn't have the cynicism of American and British series about show business and I agreed but now I wonder if that cynicism that seemed so edgy in the 90s and 00s was a product of moralism and puritanism because no way Americans and British cultural commentators would accept so many lovable characters that are also unfaithful, date much young women and love but betray each other in each episode nowadays and probably they accepted them in the 90s just because they were "bad" people!
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Post by mllemass on Jan 26, 2021 11:44:00 GMT
I was curious, so I looked up the ages of the actors, and there isn’t as big an age difference between Mathias and Noémie as I thought. He’s not old enough to be her father - he just looks older than his actual age and she looks younger. It’s interesting, though, that the actors playing Mathias, his ex-wife and Camille’s mother are all the same age.
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Post by sgev1977 on Jan 27, 2021 3:11:31 GMT
Kenneth Turan liked it!
Also from his account, a link to the review I mentioned above,
Reading again my post it sounds like I'm being cynical about "cynical" British and American comedies! I actually really liked Extras but I wondered if behind the despise Ricky Gervais felt against actors and, in general, showbusiness types weren't an old traditionally moralism. He is a "nasty" comedian but maybe deep down he is just a guy who believes that some things are just not right. The review says that in comparison Call My Agent is very nice about people who are usually portrayed as villains in American series and they are right. It's a different point of view. It's actually a very traditional sitcom with a lot of slapstick and some ridiculous misunderstandings that in real life would be easily resolved by talking but somehow no one thinks about it until too late! But at the same time it's very European. It's not just the age difference between Matthias and Naomi or the difference of the "power" dynamics between them but also there is for example, the Jose Garcia character. He is plying himself as a married man infatuated with another woman for years. I mean Kate Winslet, Patrick Stewart or Daniel Radcliffe also played amoral versions of themselves in Extras but the difference here is that the series sympathizes with Garcia! He is clumsy and behaves crazy (in a funny way!) because he is in love... with a woman who isn't his wife and who he almost cheated his wife ages ago but you know what? It's nice he finally can do it! It's just another point of view and because it's different even when the format is old, it feels new and liberating! EDITED it especially feels "different" because we are living in a very conservative ane moralistic times! Maybe those themes wouldn't feel odd in some 1970s American comedies!
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Post by mllemass on Jan 27, 2021 4:43:36 GMT
I mentioned the age difference between Mathias and Noémie because of the Sigourney Weaver episode. When she’s told that the actor she wants as her love interest is only 35, she says that a man her age would have been given a much-younger love interest and no one would have said a thing about it. Yes, I agree that the boss-and-assistant relationship is a bigger issue than their age difference.
I can’t read the NY Times review because it’s blocked.
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Post by sgev1977 on Jan 27, 2021 12:48:55 GMT
I have the app and they gave me some free articles. I don't pay for them!
The "moralistic" theory is all mine, tho. Lol They just praised it because the characters are nice people when those kind of characters are usually portrayed in a negative light by the much more cynical American and British sitcoms.
I thought that the relationship between Matthias and Noemi wouldn't be well received by English speaking Twitter nowadays and that the unfaithful Jose Garcia's version of himself would be traditionally portrayed as a villain in the simplistic American format. But the article didn't went there. They don't talk about sex! It's just about the ambitious characters that contrary to their American versions, really care about their clients and about the art.
In general, I think they present characters with a lot of flaws and weaknesses who deep down are good. It's not very deep and it doesn't seem so revolutionary as the early Gervais work for example but the humanity they inject to the characters make it feel different, especially in these times in which social media judge things based in morality tests!
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