All that’s before we come onto dwindling box office, hostile crew, neurotic talent, ambulance-chasing press, VFX artists going postal, and Martin Scorsese issuing edicts that movies like Tecto are destroying moviemaking, while everybody involved is just trying to get through their 27-hour day and complete the paperwork on their divorce.
Bearing the brunt of the madness is Daniel (Himesh Patel), Tecto’s first assistant director, and a man with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Maximum Studios comics. Dan loves these stories and this is his dream job, if only it weren’t ruining his life. Producer Anita (Aya Cash) turned down Sofia Coppola to take that sweet Tecto paycheck, while European director Eric (Daniel Brühl) has ambitions of redefining cinema and becoming the next Christopher Nolan, but has to contend with his own severe limitations, plus those of a story involving an invisible jack hammer and a council of men made out of moss.
And then there’s the talent. Billy Magnussen is great as square-jawed lead Adam, number one on the call sheet but number two at everything else. Vulnerable, naïve and quite possibly morphing into a sheep due to the ovine growth hormones he’s on to pump up that Maximum Studios bod, there’s a whole flock of neuroses under that supersuit. Richard E Grant plays old thesp Peter – think Withnail if the acting career had taken off, leading him to the London stage and several 1980s buddy movies of questionable racial sensitivity. Cruel, venal and diva-ish, Grant is perfect.
Jessica Hynes is a comedic highlight as a horny script supervisor Steph, a kind of Gary to Eric’s Veep. The same goes for Adefope as Dag, the sarcastic voice of reason. Brühl is excellent as Eric… I could go on but to save us all time: it’s a comedy ensemble brought together by Armando Iannucci, the bringer-together of the best comedy ensembles since Christopher Guest. They’re all operating exactly as you’d want.
Comedically, it’s sharp, fast-paced and funny. Showrunner Jon Brown and co.’s attention to detail is spot-on, and there are very few gaps left empty where a gag might go. (Look out for the fictional superhero movie posters decorating the production office walls. My fave? “Plethora: Beyond the Nadir”, but “Toothcomb” is also 10/10.) I laughed more at a single scene involving a tractor in this than I’ve laughed at entire seasons of several other new comedies put together.
It’s weaker when it comes to the narrative beyond the jokes, and doesn’t quite succeed in making you invest in the characters or their plights. Compare it to, say, Call My Agent, which offers a more gently satirical but similarly cinephiliac look behind the scenes of moviemaking, and it doesn’t hold up as well dramatically. The Franchise’s characters are there in service of the gags rather than there in their own right. That’s no problem for a comedy, but it doesn’t bode well for the show’s longevity. By the end of these half-hour episodes, it feels as though it might have said everything it came to say.
