Critic Reviews
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Isaacs does a complicated job, and that strange, mid-Atlantic Grant voice, well. .... Where Pope's series was less successful was in its depiction of Hollywood, with an unconvincing Doris Day and Grace Kelly, and artifical sets. But the older, mellower Grant, made softer by the arrival of his daughter, Jennifer, was intelligently portrayed by Isaacs.
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Isaacs, still in the role, has the squishy twinkle of the ageing Grant to a tee, and there’s a tearful catharsis in the closing scenes, which make clear that Grant did find redemption in his parenting of his and Cannon’s daughter, Jennifer. It’s a welcome happy-ish ending for a uniquely sad tale.
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Despite some stylistic missteps, Archie is a well-paced story about the life of Cary Grant, who most of us really only know from the roles he played in films that are 60 or more years old.
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When it succeeds it’s not so much because it’s revealed something essential about Grant, about whom volumes upon volumes have been written, as that creator Jeff Pope has written scenes with their own dramatic integrity that allow actors to do good work. .... Isaacs is marvelous. .... Though Laura Aikman is excellent as Cannon (and is an executive producer along with daughter Jennifer Grant), the on-and-off, back-and-forth, pleasure-and-mostly-pain of their life together goes on at vexing length.
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For all its soapy tone and faux antique trips into Edwardian England, "Archie" is about the aging Grant, which suits the message of the piece, and even perhaps the Grant-adjacent impersonation by Mr. Isaacs.
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If debonair charm was the sole arbiter of a show’s success and critical acclaim, Isaacs’ would lead Archie to the highest of praise. His performance often transcends the surface-level scripts, providing a moving amount of depth to Grant’s greatest role as a father and a son.
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A solid, if inevitably insufficient, portrait of a still-enigmatic Hollywood legend. It doesn’t completely get under Cary Grant’s skin — but Jason Isaacs’ thoughtful, transformative performance makes it worth the attempt.
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Jason Isaacs is well cast as Grant, even if he does look more like Bob Monkhouse. The role doesn’t require him to play the charming, public face of Grant, only the insecure, sorrowful side. Laura Aikman looks uncannily like Cannon and fizzes with youthful energy. .... The main weakness is the drama’s attempts to recreate Hollywood on an ITV budget.
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It gives you exactly enough good stuff to make you wish the rest of the series was better, or at least more insightful.
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For the most part, Archie is hesitant in its probing and lacking in both depth and nuance, merely sketching out the most obvious beats of Grant’s story.
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Fans of Grant may struggle to recognise the actor in the haunted, faltering figure Isaac inhabits. I suppose this is the point, to a large extent. But Isaacs’ disarmingly British version of Archie never really feels real, either. This may be down to the writing – laboured jokes and trite drama mark this as a script the real Grant would have surely scrapheaped.