Something to watch tonight: Sunday 12 January

The Franchise (Brown, 2024)

Apologies for this update arriving so late but Friday was the first time in weeks that we saw a second consecutive day of sunshine in Wellington and I may have lost my mind a little.

The Franchise was recommended to us by one of our summer houseguests and, sure enough, we blitzed through all eight half-hour episodes in a just a few days.

It’s a comedy about a hapless film crew shooting a minor entry in a major superhero shared universe in a nondescript studio just outside of London while the bigger and better resourced main picture is in the facility next door. Their efforts at getting through each day are thwarted by a combination of head office interference, director intransigence, actor sabotage or some combination of the three.

The First Assistant Director, Daniel Kumar (deadpan Himesh Patel from Station Eleven) is trying to keep the train on the tracks but is not helped by the parachuting in of his ex-girlfriend Anita (Aya Cash from The Boys) as line producer or the new Third Assistant Director, “Dag” Nwaeze (Lolly Adefope) who may or may not be a figment of everyone’s imagination.

The film’s superhero Tecto (Billy Magnussen), is played by a terminally insecure piece of beefcake who is addicted to the physical enhancement properties of various different chemical compounds and the superhero’s main superpower appears to be wielding an “invisible jackhammer” – a green pogo stick. His supervillain is played by a tired old has-been (Richard E. Grant) who counts the minutes until each day is wrapped and spends his spare time remotely attending sexually to his young wife with the aid of an app on his phone.

Jon Brown (a writer on Succession and Avenue 5) created the series but among the list of executive producers is Armando Ianucci (The Thick of It, Veep, The Death of Stalin) and Oscar-winner Sam Mendes who directed the first episode. Also in the writers’ room is Guardian columnist Marina Hyde, one of the funniest people around.

Many of the incidents that befall the production appear to have been lightly disguised from real life and the show was painfully close for comfort for the viewers at our house who have had experience working on similar productions.

Last week HBO announced that they wouldn’t be renewing The Franchise for a second season which, on one level, is a shame because Patel and Cash are a couple I wanted to see more of but the film production satire was really a one-joke deal and those eight episodes covered it nicely from all angles.

If you like comedies about filmmaking, you would probably also enjoy Irma Vep which I recommended here back in October.

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Where to watch The Franchise