A Man in Full

A Man in Full is workmanlike in comparison [to Succession]. But perhaps that’s invidious. Standing alone, it is more than good enough.

Yes, it’s a lot to unpack. But with the prolific David E. Kelley (“Ally McBeal,” “Big Little Lies,” et al.) as showrunner, writer and executive producer, and directing duties split between actor-filmmaker Regina King (“One Night in Miami”) and Thomas Schlamme (“The West Wing,” “The Americans”), each story gets just the right amount of play, and the result is a rich mix of sudsy but spot-on social commentary and satire.

A thin and reductive take on the famed author’s sprawling saga of Southern America, it nonetheless struts about with swaggering ferocity, led by Jeff Daniels’ full-bodied performance as a blustery, bloviating capitalist predator.

The show is not as good as the book. The catch is, it’s still pretty good.

While “A Man in Full” begins with promise, this limited series – like its lead character — falls apart by the end, which tosses out the novel’s denouement in favor of an ending that relies on Kelley’s baser instincts.

Really, the only reason to watch A Man In Full is to see Daniels swagger his way through six episodes as Charlie Croker. The rest of the show has some fine actors, but we have no idea if they’ll get any kind of meaty stories in such a brief series.

A Man In Full feels half-baked. All the elements are there. It’s well-shot, acted, and directed. No expense was spared. But it lacks punch. Spice. To use a word Croker loves: vigor.

At the end of the day, for such a marquee series with a massive star like Daniels, there's little Daniels to actually enjoy. His thick Southern drawl drips with conviction, and it's hard to turn away from his irresistible charisma. Unfortunately, he's a small speck in this wider portrait of Atlanta that, while evergreen, rarely feels all that full in itself.

Despite man after man mocking the weakness of others (and railing against their own), “A Man in Full” ends up sapping what little strength it has as a blunt sendup of excess machismo.

The show ends up far less than the sum of its parts, an oddly generic and muted take on a larger-than-life American story.

Kelley replaces what was on the page with little of distinctive note. A Man in Full isn’t big enough, smart enough, funny enough or outlandish enough to bother using the Wolfe title or his character names. Despite an exceptional cast that feels like it would have been game for almost anything Kelley and directors Regina King and Thomas Schlamme asked of them, A Man in Full is a small and flat TV series.

But apart from Charlie, through whom each story thread passes, most other characters don’t have enough, or good enough material to seem quite real, and many are just unpleasant. An unlikable character without an inner life is merely unlikable — and uninteresting.

For the most part, this is a messy, scattershot and ultimately - perhaps most egregiously - dull six-part miniseries.

Where Wolfe was adept at exploring societal, political and racial issues with a satirical eye, Kelley doesn’t have the same talents. There are hints of Succession – family troubles, talk of money, Croker yelling about “the Boeing” – but the series is nowhere near the same league.

A lot of talented people deliver an underachiever of a show with A Man in Full, a Netflix series that feels as if it’s creatively running on empty.

A Man in Full has little to say about any facet of America. Instead, it seems Wolfe’s novel was just another piece of IP that could be fed into Netflix’s content-creating machine, churning out something that seems vaguely prestigious, just so long as you don’t look too closely.

"Man" fails to achieve the scope or satire that made "Succession" so successful. There's a watchable quality you can find in any of Kelley's series. But the sheen wears off quickly.

The class and racial issues, the knocks at the justice system, and the take on toxic masculinity are all delivered with an obviousness that can be irritating. Also irritating: Daniels’s over-the-top acting, which manifests primarily in his broad, somewhat absurd accent and his forced charisma.

The cast includes Jeff Daniels, Diane Lane, Lucy Liu, and William Jackson Harper. Yet the scant six episodes this team delivers feel superficial, disjointed, and ultimately pointless. Tasked with updating a 26-year-old novel that has aged poorly, Kelley pares back so much context and character development that what’s left never resolves into a cohesive story.