Maniac is not as smart as he thinks – but it's always a good time

I'll be honest: I get bored of shows like Maniacal. There was a time when a prestigious drama starring Emma Stone and Jonah Hill, who plays as a three-way cross. beginning, Brazil, and FX Legion, would have sounded as inescapable. But as you probably noticed, there is a lot of prestige-y TV these days. A large part is good. Almost nothing is awesome. The bar has been lifted, and there are too many TV series that receive huge praise when they barely manage to do it.

Maniacal is a show that could be described as "ambitious" or "daring" or "unconventional", but its ambitions, audacity and unconventionality are clearly within the confines of prestige television. Is there an ornate introduction sequence that juxtaposes the story of the show with the Big Bang? Yes (and it ends with the argument that "all souls are looking for connection"). Is there a lot of cultural satire about how technology could actually be ruin our lives? Yes (and if I was in college, it would probably have opened my eyes). Is there a lot of visual stuff designed to make viewers wonder what's real and what's not? Yes (and if you are sensitive, you probably should not take it before watching it). Does everything look incredibly expensive? Yes (and I'm sure that was the case). Is there a long, glitzy projectile? Yes and c & # 39; what you pay a Joji Fukunaga Cary for)!

So, it's with credit that I can say Maniacal I was angry before finally, in the end, either won me or let me down. Maniacal He's never as original or daring as he thinks, but East impeccably designed, and he has always caught my attention.

What East this show, anyway? Here is what I can explain without spoiling anything. Maniacal is located in a kind of parallel universe, contemporary in New York. Jonah Hill plays Owen Milgrim, the long neglected son of a wealthy family, who may or may not be schizophrenic. Emma Stone plays Annie Landsberg, a caustic addict at the top of what appears to be an impending downward spiral. Both are engaged in a hospital-based pharmaceutical trial in which they will receive a series of pills that ultimately promise to cure the problems and pains of anyone who takes them. About half of the show takes place in the real world. The other half takes place in the hallucinatory world of pills, where Owen and Annie adopt new identities in a series of surreal adventures with allegorical links to the problems to be solved.

You can see how Maniacal They have gathered such talent, director Fukunaga, hired yesterday to direct the next James Bond, and stars Stone and Hill, who have four Oscar nominations (and a win) between them. As a creative opportunity, Maniacal must have seemed both extremely difficult and extremely entertaining. The elastic premise of the show allows everyone to wear a bunch of hats, especially Stone and Hill, who have the chance to try a bunch of wild suits and accents. In one episode, Stone embodies a femme fatale in front of Hill's safecracker. in another, Hill embodies a sensitive gobbler at the center of a global scandal while Stone embodies an amnesiac secret agent who turns out to be ridiculously deadly with a gun. (And these are two of the most Ordinary scenarios Maniacal offers; I'll let you discover the craziest transformations for yourself.)

These fantastic sequences are the real meat of Maniacal, and both Stone and Hill are great in them. The stone is chameleon, moving convincingly through the costumes and eras while occasionally offering a glimpse of Annie's bitterness. Hill's performance is flatter, but that suits his character, whose depression consumes so much that it absorbs almost all the personalities he assumes.

And it is undeniably fun to see Owen and Annie launching into these hazelnut capers with a deadly seriousness. But the problem of placing so much of your show in a dream country is that so much of your show does not really matter. Maniacal tries to make clear that these elaborate fantasy scenarios have significant implications for the real world, with mirrored versions of the real people and real life issues of Owen and Annie emerging in supportive roles. And it's interesting to see how much Owen's relationship with Annie is developing as they are hallucinating, which makes it an open question of how much they really know each other. But the series is smooth enough that these questions are often set aside for the next hyper-stylized sequence of Long Island in the 1980s, or a 1947 session, or a Kubrickian medical laboratory or Kubrickian shelter. (Seriously, these guys love Kubrick.)

Friendly changes for the often inflated dramas of Netflix, the episodes last about 45 minutes, and many are getting closer to 30 minutes. Maniacal is completed by some intrigues and useless characters. Justin Theroux has a blast playing a skeptical doctor with a crippling Oedipus conflict – but none of his madness and crazy twitches can redeem the character's bow, who continues to throw spaghetti on the wall in a failed effort . As Theroux's domineering mother – and also the voice of a computer with more emotions to solve than many of these characters – Sally Field is awesome. Of course she's it! She is Sally Field! But you can admire a performance by asking yourself why the material does not do more to serve it.

You can feel this same problem in the basic structure of Maniacalwho juggles frenzy with characters, stories and genres. The good news is that you will never be bored for long. The bad news is that Maniacal never really settles long enough to achieve any sort of catharsis. By the time the series ends, the characters have gone through an emotional crisis, but with rare exceptions, I have never felt that I was there with them.

And that brings us to the Netflix test, which is something quite different: if I spent a lazy weekend watching videos, could I let Netflix start playing the next episode? Or, once the credits have appeared, can I click on the main menu and watch the new seasons of BoJack Horseman or American Vandal or dozens of other new television series vying for my time? Honestly, if Netflix had not sent the 10 episodes – and if I was not professionally obliged to watch them – I probably would not have bothered to finish Maniacal. But now that I to have finished, I'm not sorry I did it. So who am I to turn you away?