Adam Lenhardt
Senior HTF Member
In celebration of its Golden Globe win for Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy, Amazon is making the first season of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" available free to stream all weekend long, until just before midnight Monday. I just finished the pilot and hope to make it the rest of the way through while it's still free.
From Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino comes the latest family dramedy with the rhythms of a screwball comedy. Many of the elements will be very familiar to "Gilmore Girls" fans. But this time around, the Palladinos trade old-money WASPs in twenty-first century New England for upper crust Jews in late fifties Manhattan.
As the series begins, Miriam "Midge" Maisel's life has gone completely according to plan. She is the unfaltering image of an ideal housewife, going through excessive pains to preserve the image. Her husband has a very good job, and she has the requisite two children. The only facet of her character that fails to adhere to the orthodoxy of the times is her mouth: she has opinions, perceptive ones, witty ones, indiscreet ones.
Everything is exactly as she dreamed it would be... until it all comes crumbling down. If "Gilmore Girls" was built around a scandalous teenage pregnancy, "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" is built around a scandalous marital collapse.
And as Midge broadcasts her anger, disappointment and indignation across Greenwich Village, she -- and the show -- come alive.
Rachel Brosnahan (an Irish Catholic girl from the Midwest) is electric in the title role, effortlessly embodies a young woman who is on the surface different from her in nearly every respect. There is quite a bit of Lorelei Gilmore in Midge, but she is far from a facsimile. The kind of emancipation that Lorelei fought so hard for is dumped in Midge's lap most undesirably, much to her horror and dissatisfaction.
The supporting cast has a couple of Sherman-Palladino regulars: Alex Borstein is a series regular, and Bailey De Young recurs as Midge's friend.
The more generous budget and shooting schedule shows: from a technical standpoint, this is a far more sophisticated affair than "Gilmore Girls". The period setting is a natural fit for ASP's writing style, and the production does a great job of weaving between pitch-perfect fifties-era sets and location shooting that finds little corners of the West Side that still more or less like they did 60 years ago. "Gilmore Girls" leaned heavily on its standing sets and the Warner Bros. backlot. This is set in NYC, shot in NYC, and it shows.
One of the more interesting facets is the way it weaves real historical places and people into its fictional narrative. A central location is the Gaslight Cafe, which closed in 1971. The exterior is faithfully recreated to match dozens of photographs of family people taken at the entrance, but the interior is far more expansive that the real deal. Instead of aiming for literal accuracy, the show brings to life our collective cultural memory of what such spaces are like. Some famous people, like Ed Sullivan and Bob Newhart, appear via archival footage while others, like Lenny Bruce, are portrayed by actors.
From Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino comes the latest family dramedy with the rhythms of a screwball comedy. Many of the elements will be very familiar to "Gilmore Girls" fans. But this time around, the Palladinos trade old-money WASPs in twenty-first century New England for upper crust Jews in late fifties Manhattan.
As the series begins, Miriam "Midge" Maisel's life has gone completely according to plan. She is the unfaltering image of an ideal housewife, going through excessive pains to preserve the image. Her husband has a very good job, and she has the requisite two children. The only facet of her character that fails to adhere to the orthodoxy of the times is her mouth: she has opinions, perceptive ones, witty ones, indiscreet ones.
Everything is exactly as she dreamed it would be... until it all comes crumbling down. If "Gilmore Girls" was built around a scandalous teenage pregnancy, "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" is built around a scandalous marital collapse.
And as Midge broadcasts her anger, disappointment and indignation across Greenwich Village, she -- and the show -- come alive.
Rachel Brosnahan (an Irish Catholic girl from the Midwest) is electric in the title role, effortlessly embodies a young woman who is on the surface different from her in nearly every respect. There is quite a bit of Lorelei Gilmore in Midge, but she is far from a facsimile. The kind of emancipation that Lorelei fought so hard for is dumped in Midge's lap most undesirably, much to her horror and dissatisfaction.
The supporting cast has a couple of Sherman-Palladino regulars: Alex Borstein is a series regular, and Bailey De Young recurs as Midge's friend.
The more generous budget and shooting schedule shows: from a technical standpoint, this is a far more sophisticated affair than "Gilmore Girls". The period setting is a natural fit for ASP's writing style, and the production does a great job of weaving between pitch-perfect fifties-era sets and location shooting that finds little corners of the West Side that still more or less like they did 60 years ago. "Gilmore Girls" leaned heavily on its standing sets and the Warner Bros. backlot. This is set in NYC, shot in NYC, and it shows.
One of the more interesting facets is the way it weaves real historical places and people into its fictional narrative. A central location is the Gaslight Cafe, which closed in 1971. The exterior is faithfully recreated to match dozens of photographs of family people taken at the entrance, but the interior is far more expansive that the real deal. Instead of aiming for literal accuracy, the show brings to life our collective cultural memory of what such spaces are like. Some famous people, like Ed Sullivan and Bob Newhart, appear via archival footage while others, like Lenny Bruce, are portrayed by actors.
