Seth Rogen is a Hollywood boss balancing high art and commerce. New Apple TV+ series The Studio has a lot of fun with this idea. Here’s our review.
To make a show like The Studio work, you’ve got to have the contacts book. Appreciating that it’s a thinly-fictionalised, suitably heightened telling of the inner-workings of Hollywood, it instantly feels a bit more genuine if it opens with Paul Dano filming a key sequence which turns out to be part of a movie.
Which, of course, is precisely what happens. It’s a properly-mounted sequence, with a properly Paul Dano-y Paul Dano, and it sets the tone that even though this is pretend, it doesn’t feel very pretend.
The setup of The Studio sees Seth Rogen – who co-created the show, and co-directs the opening episode with Evan Goldberg – as a studio executive at Continental Pictures. When the studio boss – Bryan Cranston definitely not being David Zaslav, honest guv – gets fed up with art house pictures and wants big commercial movies instead, he fires long-standing exec Patty (Catherine O’Hara) and hires Rogen as her replacement.
It’s a dream job. Rogen’s Matt Remick, in his opening speech to his team, talks about the importance of making important films as well as commercial ones, and then spends the rest of the first episode trying to put together a film based on Kool-Aid. Because, y’know, the Barbie movie worked.
The first episode in particular is terrific. Remick has two different versions of the Kool-Aid film he wants to make, one involving Martin Scorsese, the other involving Nicholas Stoller (who directed Rogen in Bad Neighbours and its sequel). Both directors gamely turn up to play themselves, and it swiftly becomes a movie nerd’s dream programme. It’s also fast, blistering funny, painting itself large targets that it easily hits.
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Still, it’s Cranston who emerges as the star attraction, spitting out capitalistic lines with requisite sneer and belief. Well, there’s another star attraction too – and a hell of a movie poster – but I ain’t spoiling it.
Episode two drops slightly, but remains very good fun. Rogen this time is heading to the set of one of Continental’s movies, where Sarah Polley is directing. Smartly casting movie directors who also have acting pedigree, Polley walks a tonal line very, very well: she doesn’t want to piss off the boss, she only has two takes to get her shot. The comedy goes a little broader, almost bordering on farce at one point. The episode is around half the length of the first too, and that feels about right. I like that The Studio can scale. The third episode is under review embargo, but its running time appropriately increases again.
What you don’t get, at least yet, is much in the way of character development and plot progression with The Studio. What you do get is a rollicking good time, especially if you happen to be a movie nerd. I like to think that movie nerds are still out there, with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg banking on that too. If they turn out to have found the audience sweet spot, there may just be six seasons and a movie in this…
The Studio is streaming on Apple TV+; episodes 1 and 2 are available now, with episode 3 due on the 2nd April.
