Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 9 July

Étoile (Sherman-Palladino & Palladino, 2025)

The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel was one of the delights of television’s streaming renaissance. There was nothing like it (unless you count Julia or maybe Lessons in Chemistry). It wasn’t based on anything, it didn’t involve aliens or true crime or rich people’s problems. (Actually, there may have been a few rich people’s problems.)

It recreated a cultural era with considerable affection and populated it with a rich cast of characters who would keep you engaged while you soaked in this changing world. It wasn’t as heavy as Mad Men, but it covered similar territory. It was clearly fantasy, but it at the same time felt grounded. It won 22 Primetime Emmy Awards.

After five successful seasons of Maisel, Amy Sherman-Palladino and her creative partner Dan Palladino turned their attention to the present day and another art form. Instead of stand-up comedy in the 1960s, Étoile is about classical ballet in the here and now.

Like every arts organisation, the two biggest ballet companies in New York and Paris are struggling with Covid fallout. Audiences numbers haven’t rebounded and the overheads are biting. In Paris, Charlotte Gainsbourg’s interim head of the Opera Ballet hatches a plan – a creative swap of the biggest names in each company for a season that will reinvigorate both companies creatively and commercially. The plan will be bankrolled by one of those impossibly wealthy philanthropists, an unapologetic planet destroyer played with glee by Simon Callow.

Back in New York, the director of the Metropolitan Ballet (Luke Kirby who played Lenny Bruce for Mrs. Maisel) is also struggling but is resistant to giving up so much control. The deal will involve his family name – Fish – being taken off the theatre and replaced with Callow’s mysterious Crispin Shamblee.

What entails is a cross-cultural comedy of manners as dancers and choreographers traverse the Atlantic and find themselves as fish out of water, never losing the fast-paced New York repartee that the Palladino’s are famous for.

In fact, if there’s a glitch here it’s that the French actors aren’t quite up to speed with what the script requires – no shade on them as everything else is mostly awesome – but Gainsbourg in particular has no apparent comedy chops despite a valiant effort on her behalf.

What I loved about Étoile is that no matter how uneven it is outside of the studio, it clearly loves and respects the art of ballet and lets the dancers shine. Mrs. Maisel was the same – it took comedy seriously and you knew Rachel Brosnahan could hold her own with the greats. Étoile trusts the dancers and gives them time and space, even while it is showing us how ridiculous everything is behind the scenes.

Mrs. Maisel managed to secure the real Carnegie Hall as a location, and Étoile has somehow managed to get permission from Lincoln Center – inside and out – and the Paris Opera Ballet, so it feels right. The participation of a few notable dance celebrities (Unity Phelan, Tiler Peck and Joy Womack among others) doesn’t hurt.

Like Mrs. Maisel, Étoile has incredible production values – people and locations mostly – but Amazon have decided that one season is enough (despite the clear intent from the Palladinos for more). It seems as if Prime Video’s deep pockets are being directed at completing The Lord of the Rings: The Ring of Power – fan favourites like Étoile and The Wheel of Time are now surplus to requirements. The fact that audiences for those shows skew more female than, say, The Boys, Fallout or Reacher, is probably neither here nor there.

If you want to hear me talk about Étoile with Emile Donovan on RNZ Nights, here’s a link.

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Where to watch Étoile