You Should Netflix This Now: Slings and Arrows

It’s getting to the point where there’s too much entertainment readily available.  I’m sure most of you are old enough to remember that at one point, if you wanted to watch a specific episode of The X-Files, you had to be lucky enough to have taped it, or know someone who’d taped it, or catch a re-run on TV.  Even 10 years ago, you’d still have to go out and hunt down an actual DVD, or try to download the episode from an extremely sketchy file sharing program.

Now, you can name pretty much any movie or episode of TV, and I can have it playing on my computer inside 90 seconds.  So how do you sort through the wheat and the chaff?  Easy.  Same as it ever was.  Personal recommendations and word of mouth.  No one needs to talk up or talk down something like Scrubs.  It’s there, it’s incredibly well known, there are a modest range of opinions on its quality.  But there are other shows you can watch right now, shows you’d never hear about in the mainstream media, shows like Slings and Arrows.

The premise of the show is simple.  Geoffrey Tennant, once a rising star at the New Burbage Festival, ‘went crazy’ years ago playing the lead in Hamlet. (The full story comes out during the first season)  He runs a small, failing theater company in Toronto, only to be summoned back to the Festival after the untimely death of his mentor/nemesis/best friend Oliver Wells, the Festival’s Artistic Director.  Geoffery eventually takes over as interim director.  The problem?  He keeps seeing Oilver’s ghost, so he might still be crazy.  Also, the Festival is more concerned with turning a profit than putting on a good show.  Also, the play is Hamlet.  Also, the actor playing the title role is a Hollywood action star who doesn’t know Shakespeare from a hole in the ground.

First of all, the supporting cast is simply amazing.

Boom! Rachel McAdams.  She has a great role as the company’s ingenue, playing Ophiela of course.  She acts the hell out of this role with vivacious wit and just an absurd amount of charm.

 

Boom! Mark McKinney, whom you might remember from SNL or Kids in the Hall.  He plays the straight man incredibly well, the Only Sane Man in a sea of crazy actors, the only guy who has the grounded, real-world knowledge to make sure the Festival actually turns a profit and stays afloat.

Boom!  Don McKeller as Darren Nichols, the, I don’t even know what to say about Darren.  Basically, he’s a foil for Geoffery.  He’s a postmodern nightmare who reveres and secretly hates the theater.  He’s your idea of the angry, eccentric director turned up to 11.  Witness the following clip.

Deal with that.

No show would be complete without a strong, complicated, funny, handsome lead.  Paul Gross delivers in spades.  His Geoffery is pretty much everything you want in a lead.  He’s incredibly passionate about his craft, but not the most pragmatic in its execution.  He understands emotions in general so well that he’s an incredibly talented actor and director, but understands his own psyche enough that he has massive unresolved issues in his past.  He’s self-effacing but willing to stand up for what he believes in.  He’s Quixotic sometimes, and deviously pragmatic others.  He’s a brilliant mess.

 

This is a truly great series.  The whole thing is available on Netflix Instant Watch, right now.  It’s a Canadian show – 3 Series of 6 episodes each.  You could get through it in a weekend if you really pushed it.  Anyone who’s had anything to do with theater will find moments that resonate in this show, and even if you hate the theater and couldn’t name two of Shakespeare’s plays, the characters and wry comedy are enough to make this eminently worthwhile.

This show does Crowning Moment of Heartwarming and Crowning Moment of Funny in the space of five minutes.  It takes what’s in this day and age a small, niche art form, and shows what’s possible in that medium – from the medium of television.  It shows the beauty of a play – the imperfection of live performance, the beauty of spontaneously generated moments.  The incredible work ethic of actors who rehearse for thousands of hours only to spend all that time, all that energy on two glorious hours on stage, where magic can truly happen.  This show gives you moments like this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUGCznFCGC8

 

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6 Comments

  1. Oh ma gee, this. This, this, this. Full disclosure: I’m not only a longtime theatre nerd, I’m also a Shakespeare fiend. But I totally agree with you—I think this show is one of the greatest ways to teach a non-theatre person just what all the fuss is about.

  2. Nick, where did you find that information? I was unaware of that. Maybe I should edit this to really emphasize the “now” part of you “you should Netflix this now”.

  3. I searched for the show and it stated above the “play/discs” option that the availability was “streaming until 6/1/2013”. I’m going to see how many episodes (if any) I can fit into my schedule until then, but it looks like I’ll be resorting to discs.

  4. Thanks for introducing me to this. I love it. There really isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for Rachel McAdams. Before the 1st season was over she was a Hollywood star. All 3 seasons are available on Amazon Video. Prime members have total access to the videos for no charge. Fired up the XBox, downloaded the app, and am now 4 episodes into the 2nd season. You have to go to Canada and the UK for really quality TV these days.

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