Nicole Kidman
“EXPATS”(Prime Video): The arrogance of Western culture gets toasted and roasted in “Expats,” a six-part miniseries about rich foreigners living lives of miserable affluence in modern-day Hong Kong.
Created by Lulu Wang, “Expats” is repellant to about the same degree as her “The Farewell” was warm and life-affirming. At least a half-dozen times while watching this series I turned to the Missus and asked aloud: “Are we supposed to like anybody in this show?”
Given that, why bother? Well, because the damn thing has been so well acted, that’s why.
From its first episode one might conclude that “Expats” is a mystery waiting to be solved.
American couple Margaret and Clarke (Nicole Kidman, Brian Tee) reside in a posh mountaintop high-rise overlooking the city. Both geographically and emotionally they seem to be above it all.
Except…they are each tormented in their own individual ways in the wake of a staggering loss. Months before their youngest child, Gus, was snatched off the street.
“Expats” isn’t about the search for Gus, whose fate is speculated on but never solved. Rather, Wang probes the mentality of rich white folk who live privileged existences in a foreign country.
It’s not pretty.
Among the various characters are Margaret and Clark’s neighbors, a spectacularly dysfunctional pair played by Soraya Blue and Jack Huston. There’s the young Korean American woman (Ji-young Yoo), a party girl who was supposed to be watching Gus when he vanished.
If the series was devoted only to these arrogant (inadvertent and otherwise) strangers in a strange land it would be rough going.
Happily we also eavesdrop on the lives of Hong Kong teens (some of whom are risking prison by protesting mainland Chinese governance of the city). And the final episode spends time with the Filipino cooks, housekeepers and sitters who have left their own children behind to tend to the offspring of their wealthy employers.
Well made, but not exactly a heart warmer.
“MASTERS OF THE AIR” (Apple+): More like “Masters of Cliche.”
My anticipation was high upon learning that the same folk who brought us the brilliant WWII miniseries “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific” were turning their attention to the flyboys who carried out bombing missions over Europe.
The first couple of episodes of “Masters of the Air,” though, were borderline unwatchable. It was as if the writers had immersed themselves in every old movie ever made about the subject and were determined to copy them.
This result was dialogue neck deep in creaky cliches. I wanted to throw something heavy at my TV.
The good news is that “Masters of the Air” gradually loses its aw-shucks Andy Hardy attitude and gets into the horrifying meat and potatoes of aerial combat. Once off the ground, the show becomes a gripping survival drama…terrifying, even.
One can only come away in awe of the kids (some of the pilots were still in their teens) who rode these thin metal tubes through skies filled with flying shrapnel, blasted away at German fighter planes, all the while freezing their asses off in unpressurized compartments. (I cannot imagine a more horrifying gig than manning a ball turret on the belly of one of these flying fortresses.)
As time goes by one cannot even be assured that lead characters played by the likes of Austin Butler (“Elvis”) and Callum Turner (“The Boys in the Boat”) will return from their ghastly missions.
(Three-fourths of U.S. airmen were killed, seriously injured or became POWs. Their average age of death was only 23.)
My advice: Start with Episode 3. But brace yourself.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 