A Man in Full

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.