So maybe this isn’t exactly the ideal time to release a TV series where James Corden plays a seemingly nice guy who proves prone to impatience and irritation. That series, Amazon’s Mammalsalso has a restaurant in the background is a particularly poisonous version of serendipity.
It clouds one’s ability to make an assessment as seemingly uncontroversial as saying that Corden is actually very good at Mammals. I mean, before doing karaoke with celebrities in a trailer-drawn car or publicly hugging disgraced former White House press secretaries, Corden was a Tony-winning actor. I can still easily imagine people complaining that Corden’s performance in Mammals is annoying, or they can’t help but see his character as annoying, as if that’s not the intent of the character he’s playing.
Mammals
It comes down to
Corden’s lively turn is both a blessing and a disadvantage.
Corden ends up carrying a lot of the humor (of which there is ultimately only a little bit) and an impressive amount of emotional resonance (of which there is some, but it gets confusing) in Mammalsa strange and very writers and theatrical little show that, fittingly enough, comes from acclaimed playwright Jez Butterworth (the ferryman). That Mammals maybe it could have worked as well or better as a two hour show, rather than six half hour episodes is a very valid complaint. But after wondering what the purpose of the whole thing was during the opening episodes, I quite liked how the callbacks and bits of artificial structuring paid off.
Co-created by Butterworth and James Richardson, with Butterworth writing the entirety, Mammals plays Corden as Jamie, a seemingly bubbly chef about to open his first solo restaurant. His restaurant, which is presented as a parody of every successful restaurant from 15 years ago, although no one says so, is called Amandine, after his lovely French wife (Melia Kreiling). Amandine is pregnant and, perhaps feeling the end of their freedom to do such things, the happy couple goes on vacation to a cottage by the sea, a place so secluded and so beautiful that it attracts a very funny guest star who lives alone in the premiere. All signs point to Jamie and Amandine being very much in love, and if you want to know why a woman who looks like Amandine is with a man who looks like Jamie, it will be explained later in the series.
When Amandine miscarries, it’s up to Jamie to notify their friends and loved ones, a process that requires him to borrow her phone because only she has everyone’s contact information, or something to that effect. By now, you’re already itching to complain about “realism,” a critique that won’t get you very far in a show that builds an astonishingly large number of literary motifs around a plot that’s pretty minimal. Oh, and that plot? It is triggered by the moment when Jamie, again using Amandine’s phone, receives a dirty text from a man named “Paul”.
Has Amandine – gasping for breath! – had an affair? Jamie begins to investigate with the help of his best friend Jeff (Colin Morgan), an academic who studies the mating ritual of voles, in case you want ONE of the explanations for the show’s title. Again, so many literary motifs, though Butterworth and director Stephanie Laing have given credit for the small dose of reluctance not to use Bloodhound Gang’s “The Bad Touch” – “You and me, honey, is nothing but mammals / So let’s do as they do on Discovery Channel” – to a soundtrack dominated by more whimsical French stuff.
By the way, Jeff is married to Lue, a seemingly stale shopkeeper who you might forget he was all part of the show if she wasn’t played by two-time Oscar nominee Sally Hawkins. Jeff and Lue aren’t exactly estranged, but a broken relationship develops between them and she finds solace in a strange choice of books she found in her shop.
The show puts its symbols and metaphors and reservations about traditional romance on thick, which only adds to the ridiculousness of someone calling Corden’s performance broad. It’s definitely broad, but in a show dominated by characters who seem to be hiding their romantic escapades or their deepest feelings, or both, Jamie the person who wears his emotions on his sleeve is probably to his detriment. When he jokes, he makes big jokes. When he feels pain, he feels pain great. And when paranoia sets in, it becomes suspiciously large. Would you like James Corden as the protagonist of your understated salon romance? No, but this isn’t an understated salon romance — and Jamie may be the protagonist, but he’s not something as simple as “wrongful husband.” Amazon was smart about planning Mammals for this week, because in structure and characterization the show is very, very close to a WASP-esque take on Fleishman is in troublewhich launches on Hulu next week.
Let’s say if you are in conflict with your feelings towards everyone in… Mammalsthat’s the right response, and Corden makes it easy to be sympathetic to and then distressed by Jamie, who comes across as a teddy bear one scene and a grizzly bear the next.
Jamie is mercurial in the way everyone enters Mammals wants to be or should be according to the laws of nature. Kreiling almost innocently makes Amandine an object of desire for everyone on screen, as if she were simply reflecting their inner uneducated mammal. For their part, Jeff and Lue are oppressed, to the point where there is nothing animalistic about any of them anymore. He’s intellectualized his life too much and she needs an escape, but not one you’d ever predict.
Put all these characters together and the clashes are inevitable, and someone is bound to get hurt – possibly everyone. The performances are good enough to make you worry about any character, though Hawkins’ stopping craziness felt the most inexplicable and therefore arguably the most real (or least written).
Butterworth’s touch is so ubiquitous that I was alternately very amused and nearly choked by how over-determined-by-his-author-God Mammals is. Laing is an inspired choice to orchestrate the entire series as she is very good at directing love stories that are prickly (Physical) or intelligent (Made for love) or corrosive (Parting), and in a show that is all those things, the extent to which things stick together is largely due to her.
Like Fleishman, Mammals is a story that takes the whole journey to really sink in. It’s deceptively simple – my notes read, “So, uh, what’s the point of all this?” several times – until it’s deceptively complicated. Corden, with all his baggage, might be the perfect actor to keep viewers uneasy and on edge, but this could be a time when many viewers just aren’t interested in going on an eyebrow-raising journey with him.
