Caught up with Avenue 5 tonight - the debut show of the new HBO series was on last night. It's billed as comedy science fiction. I'm always up for that. I like The Orville in many ways better than most of the Star Trek sequels. And as I mentioned in my review of Zoey's Fabulous Playlist last week, I discovered I really like science fiction musicals. Comedies and musicals are related, at least a little, right?
But I have to say that the first twenty minutes of so of this first episode of Avenue 5 were too slapstick for my science fiction tastes. The humor varied from forced to moronic. So, given that I don't usually waste time reviewing a series with no redeeming value, why I am reviewing Avenue 5?
Because, obviously, something in the last five or ten minutes makes me think it does have a lot of redeeming value. Here's the set-up: some kind of space luxury liner is out there in space, far from Earth, around Uranus. Actually, I think the place is closer to Saturn, but it's way out there, somewhere in that vicinity. And it suffers a glitch that causes two things to happen: a guy doing work outside the ship (the Avenue 5) gets killed, and the ship gets knocked off course. The upshot: the Avenue 5 will take three years not eight weeks to get back home to Earth.
Ordinarily, the Captain will marshall all of his or her smarts and assets and take some corrective action. The Captain is Ryan Clark, played by House's Hugh Laurie. And in a redeeming instant, we learn of a kicker, which makes most of that stupid humor worthwhile. Clark is not really a Captain. He's just playing a Captain, hired to do this because of his reassuring manner. The real Captain was the poor guy who got killed in space.
So, suddenly, I'm interested. I'll put up with the dumb schtick for at least a few episodes and report back to you, as fast as I can.
just up on Bandcamp, FREE - or get CD here
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