Avenue 5

The satire of Avenue 5 isn’t quite as sharp as some of Iannucci's other shows were right out of the gate, but there’s more than enough good stuff there to keep us curious as to where he’s going to take this story.

The laughs aren’t as rapid-fire as they were in “Veep,” but they are plentiful. Gad perfects that smarmy billionaire; Suzy Nakamura is ideal as his common law assistant. ... Laurie is ideal at the helm – even when the story seems like it’s rudderless. He plays captain in a way you wouldn’t think and handles disaster like Jean-Luc Picard never would. Make it so? “Avenue 5” does.

Avenue 5 gets sharper with each of the four episodes sent to critics, which bodes well for what lies ahead, when the bulk of the world-building is done. It isn’t Veep, sure, but there are traces of Selina Meyer in Ryan; both are smug, two-faced charlatans entrusted with far more power than they deserve. The show also benefits from Iannucci’s dark, profane, literary sensibility.

“Avenue 5” is a surefire hit and will bolster HBO’s reputation as the best place to go to view unique, well-thought-out comedies. Although there were some comedic inconsistencies in the first four episodes I watched, when the humor hits the mark, and it does quite frequently, “Avenue 5” is laugh out loud funny.

Putting aside any expectations for another serving of Iannucci’s savage satire, Avenue 5 is still a sharply-written comedy with a strong cast and an enjoyable mix of highbrow punchlines, broad physical comedy, and silly sight gags, one involving a radiation shield of human excrement.

If the fact that this character literally is named Karen strikes you as either too clever or else somewhat dumb, then this is not the show for you. “Avenue 5” is distinguished by a high-low sensibility in which poop jokes are about waste and entropy and fatal pollution but also, foremost, about tons of poop, the sight of which lightens the mood.

A splendidly silly vehicle of knockabout farce among the stars. [20 Jan - 2 Feb 2020, p.9]

Their ambitions are relatively modest in a day when Greatness Is All. But greatness can be overrated, and both series [Avenue 5 and Medical Police] are expertly played, with more than a modicum of good jokes and enough plot to keep you going, made by intelligent people unafraid to look dumb.

Fans of Iannucci’s razor sharp wit may be let down by a show that doesn’t have the laughs per minute of his last HBO Emmy juggernaut, but be patient and you’ll find that “Avenue 5” develops into its own bizarre creation, a commentary with memorable characters on how disaster makes actors of us all. I’m not sure how this plays out over the run of a series, but it will certainly be entertaining to watch it unfold.

It wouldn't be wrong to say Iannucci is slightly better with what worked on Veep, but Avenue 5 is plenty funny if you can launch the Veep comparisons out of the airlock. (Besides, let's be fair here, can anything be as good as Veep?) With a strong cast and Iannucci's unpredictable sense of humor, there's real potential that Avenue 5 can go a long way.

Avenue 5, is perhaps best approached — as a comic Poseidon Adventure in space. Such a perspective might benefit the first couple episodes, which don't stumble so much as they unfold and reveal themselves in ways that aren't always quite as funny as they should be, though things become more amusing after chaos starts ensuing.

A lot of Avenue 5’s issues do boil down to the growing pains of a high-concept comedy and how that hinders the rapid-fire joke machine one would expect from Iannucci. Even if you’re not familiar with his past work, this is still the case: The jokes aren’t king, the setup and the full story itself is.

The more the series embraces its own twisted instincts, the better it gets — scenes in the third and fourth episodes are more surprising, more engaging, and even smooth themselves out while Iannucci ratchets up the madness.

Avenue 5 is taking its time to find a theme and story to coalesce round them. By the end of the four episodes available for review, the plot had been back and forth along a few grooves that were already beginning to feel well-worn. The rest remained a disparate collection of delights and longueurs, despite the formidable talent before and behind the cameras.

It's like the miscegenated offspring of a quickie three-way between Lost in Space, Love Boat and Veep: sometimes funny, often inane, and usually obsessed with conjugation of fornicational verbs.

I’ve seen four episodes provided for review, and so far Avenue 5 is silly, sometimes uproarious, and even occasionally moving as it explores these questions. The series takes a minute to find the right rhythm, which it unfortunately can’t maintain with any regularity, but there’s a spark of imagination and enough narrative complication to make the show an intriguing watch as it attempts to find its balance.

The show threatens to become unwieldy at certain points, as Iannucci tries to keep all the many characters — and their secrets — in the mix while establishing the world of the future and moving the story line forward. But then “Veep” took a little while to come together, and I have faith in Iannucci’s guiding hand.

Some of them [characters], most notably Gad’s petulant Judd, are best in small doses. Others, like Laurie’s shapeshifting captain and his unexpected foil of Billie, get better and better the more we get to know them. ... If “Avenue 5” wants to get more mileage out of its premise, it’ll have to find some newer gears within it for its excellent cast and intriguing characters to play with beyond pure frustration.

HBO made the first five episodes available for review, and in the early going “Avenue 5” doesn’t entirely work but neither is it the disaster that befalls the show’s ship and passengers.

A goofy HBO comedy from "Veep" creator Armando Iannucci, which has its moments but never consistently feels out of this world.

“Avenue 5” seems more likely to just drift off into the void. There are, of course, good people at work here. Hugh Laurie stars as the spaceship’s clueless commander, Josh Gad is the clueless zillionaire funding the spaceship, Suzy Nakamura plays the tycoon’s clueless assistant. You get the drift.

One of the show’s major problems, through four of the season’s nine episodes, is that it’s hard to tell what the targets are. ... These characters banter and kvetch and berate one another in dialogue that’s cutting and foul-mouthed and largely flat, or at least not as sharp as we’ve come to expect from these writers.

“Avenue 5” has impressive visuals and cool sets. And every once in a while, someone from the gifted cast makes contact with a real zinger. Mostly, though, this is a stunningly off-key effort, delivered in a broad and ear-shattering tone.

The biggest surprise is a disappointing one: that Veep creator Armando Ianucci’s first TV series since he left behind Selina Meyer is kind of an unwieldy mess. The good surprises may eventually solve the bad one, but it’s hard to tell based on the four episodes provided for review.

Avenue 5 has a great premise, an excellent cast and, in its creator, Armando Iannucci, a satirical comedy genius at its helm. So how come it wasn't very funny? ... This still feels like something Iannucci might have done at the beginning of his career, not at its peak.

It's a bland allegorical satire built on an obvious point that unfolds in outer space where days (or nights) never end, and the passengers are irritating, and the ship is girdled by stiffs and human excreta. ... Lost in space, and on-screen, too.