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My favourite series of the year so far – and yes, I know that it’s only April – doesn’t feature hideous mushroom-headed zombies staggering through a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It doesn’t revolve around the Roy dynasty’s endless psychodramas (though in fairness, we are only two episodes into that one). And it doesn’t feature Catherine Cawood side-eyeing a series of interchangeable, patronising male police officers.
No, all these shows are terrific, but my favourite series of the year so far is a micro-budget US comedy about a bunch of failed actors stuck (barely) working for a shambolic catering firm – a show that was last on TV 13 years ago and that I assumed would never, ever return: Party Down.
Some cancellations seem premature, if not completely unfair. But when Party Down was axed in 2010, it was a cancellation that even its star Adam Scott has described as “deserved”. The show’s finale attracted an audience of 74,000 people, basically a statistical blip in a country of 330-odd million.
So it was less a feeling of surprise and more one of complete bafflement for many when Party Down returned this year for an extremely belated third series on Starz in the US and Lionsgate+ in the UK*. After all, even if the show had managed to attract any viewers the first time around, wrangling the cast back together after more than a decade is a major feat, with some of its stars having moved on to much bigger things: Scott is currently tearing it up in Severance; his co-lead Lizzy Caplan is the best thing about Fleishman is in Trouble; Jane Lynch and Megan Mullally – while not quite at their respective Glee and Will & Grace levels of stardom – remain very in-demand funny people.
It’s impressive enough that Party Down has returned with its cast intact (minus Caplan who, regrettably, was tied up filming another series), but for it to actually be good is another thing altogether. From Veronica Mars to The X-Files, TV history is replete with underwhelming returns, from shows struggling to find anything new to say with an old format, or those lazily cashing in on residual affection for their original series.
There’s certainly plenty of affection for Party Down, which seemed to quietly build an army of fans in the years after it was cancelled. But, crucially, the show does manage to find something new and interesting to say. Like Twin Peaks: The Return, another rare reboot that worked, Party Down weaponises the fact that so much time has passed since the original series, that the cast is older and slightly more crinkled around the forehead.
The show’s first two series were bursting with a sense of desperation and ennui around the potential of being stuck in a dour, dead-end job for good. But while the ennui is still very much there in this new series, there’s now almost an acceptance among the group of their lot – still catering school proms, minor celeb birthdays, the odd accidentally booked white nationalist convention. Some, like Scott’s likable loser Henry, who is now a school teacher, have abandoned acting altogether. Some are grimly plugging on, like airhead bro Kyle (Ryan Hansen). And some have lucked out, like Lynch’s dopey spiritualist Constance, now a widow and heiress to a vast fortune. In the middle of it, still frantically grafting away, is Ken Marino’s hapless boss Ronald Wayne “Ron” Donald, one of the most gloriously pathetic characters in all of TV. Watching these characters click into their old rhythms, only with a decade’s worth of life lived in between, is a rare pleasure.
Cannily, Party Down has shuffled the pack a little too. There’s two recruits to the catering company – Sackson, who rather than wanting to be an actor has his eye on the content creator market, and Lucy, a food artist whose creations seem to make those who eat them either incredibly morose or nauseous. And Jennifer Garner –playing a successful film producer stuck in an existential funk, has slotted into the Caplan role of Henry’s love interest – without rehashing the latter’s snarky performance.
The show is as funny as ever – Marino is surely one of the most underrated physical comedians around, and there’s an episode where the crew take mushrooms during a job that had me roaring – but is ever so slightly less savagely cruel to its characters than before (though an episode where Ron gets food poisoning in the middle of a job definitely doesn’t hold back). There’s something mellower and looser about the new Party Down: it’s a returning show that revels in the fact it’s returning at all. Sometimes the best shows are the ones you didn’t see coming.
* Yes, I know, I know yet another streaming service to sign up for. But Lionsgate+ offers a seven-day free trial, so enough time to whiz through all 26 of Party Down’s 30-minute long episodes and have time spare to watch the brilliant Station Eleven.
Take Five
Each week we run down the five essential pieces of pop-culture we’re watching, reading and listening to
TV – Beef Want more? Rain Dogs, starring Daisy May Cooper, tiptoes along the same tightrope between comedy and anxiety, and is on iPlayer now. MUSIC – Yaeji: With a Hammer The much-buzzed-about Korean-American artist, signed to the hyper-discerning label XL, first grabbed everyone’s attention with two EPs of stark, disquieting hip-hop-tinged house music. So it’s a surprise that her debut album has largely abandoned that sound for a sprawl of genres, from hyperpop and trip-hop to lo-fi indie and drum’n’bass. Inventive and completely, unapologetically weird, it sounds very much like the future. Expect it to be on a lot of end of year lists. Want more? March saw 100 Gecs let their hyperpop freak flag fly with their endearingly daft second album 10,000 Gecs. FILM – Air Yes, there’s something a little unsettling about the corporate nostalgia trend overwhelming cinema at the moment, but this comedy drama about the birth of the Nike Air Jordan trainer does at least boast enough talent on both sides of the camera to make the brand worship go down easy. Matt Damon is reunited onscreen with Ben Affleck, who also directs, in this tale of how a sportswear underdog struck gold. Want more? For something drastically less glitzy try Godland, about a Danish pastor’s attempts to found a church in forbidding 19th-century Iceland. In UK cinemas today. BOOK – Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor Jockey Slut and The Face contributor Emma Warren is perfectly placed to explore the global significance of the dancefloor. Everything from clog dancing to the Chicago house scene is covered, as well as the often fraught politics around dancing, in a book that serves both as a social and cultural history, and a personal memoir. Want more? Jaqueline Crooks’s debut novel Fire Rush remembers the electricity of the 1970s west London dancehall scene. PODCAST – Cotton Capital Part of a major series reckoning with the Guardian’s historical links with transatlantic slavery, this six-part podcast hosted by Maya Wolfe-Robinson expands out the story to consider how slavery also shaped the newspaper’s home town of Manchester as well as Britain and its institutions. Challenging, illuminating and necessary. Want more? Four-part Guardian podcast Trafficked looks at modern slavery in the form of the exploitation of a Ukrainian woman in the UK.
This newsletter may sometimes ding Netflix for an unimaginative, algorithmic approach to commissioning shows, but this terrific new A24-produced comedy-drama bucks the trend. Ali Wong (above) and Steven Yeun play two people drawn into an increasingly fiery feud after a minor traffic contretemps, in a stylish, imaginative show that has tons to say about race, class and our current age of rage. The whole thing is available to watch now – be warned, it gets stomach-twistingly intense at times.
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Read On
This Hollywood Reporter piece on Amazon’s muddled TV output is full of juicy details. Key quote: “There’s no vision for what an Amazon Prime show is ... It’s completely random what they make and how they make it.”
It would have been Andrew Weatherall’s 60th birthday this week. Joe Muggs meets the people ensuring the dizzyingly inventive producer’s legacy lives on through club nights, festivals and more.
West End musicals have never been more plentiful, but with so many remakes and adaptations, launching an original one is a tricky prospect, reports the Guardian’s Kate Wyver.
As someone who is largely baffled by the popularity of board game Catan, I found this NYT deep dive – published following the death of its creator – a fascinating read.
You be the Guide
Last week we asked for your favourite director departures. Here’s what you suggested (three excellent films, as it happens!):
“Steve McQueen’s screen projects, from Hunger to Small Axe, are important and powerful – but not exactly fun. The outlier, his film adaptation of Widows, was all the more enjoyable for being so unexpected – but not fluff.” – Richard Hamilton
“My fascination with David Lynch began in the early 90s when I obsessively watched Twin Peaks even though a huge amount was beyond my comprehension. I went on to study film and loved any pretentious discussions that revolved around his filmography. In 1999 I went to the cinema to see The Straight Story, only knowing that it was a Lynch film. I was half expecting some violent, visceral nastiness to be thrown into the plot but it was a stunning film; a simple story, beautifully told. The whole experience changed my perception of Lynch.” – Emma Russell
“I’ll always be amazed that George Miller was the same person who directed Happy Feet 2 … and then Mad Max Fury Road straight afterwards.” – Alison Fraser
Get involved
To mark the bank holiday weekend in the UK, this week we’re looking for your favourite pop-cultural Easter eggs – not the chocolate kind, but rather your most beloved inside jokes, callbacks or secret messages hidden by musicians, TV makers and directors for fans to seek out. Tell me your favourites by replying to this email or contacting me on gwilym.mumford@theguardian.com
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