Mark Carroll's Journal

Aka a new Marvel miniseries which like, say, Moon Knight, does its own thing and tells its own story though it does take place within the MCU. By which I mean that if you've never watched a single Marvel movie, you'll still have no problems following the plot and character arcs. (Though if you do have watched Iron Man 3 and Shang-Chi, you already know the backstory of one of the two main characters, which otherwise you quickly learn within the first episode.) There is also minimum super power content,though the fact they exists is plot relevant in the way that, hm, Willy Loman's profession is to Death of a Salesman. Genre-wise, I'd qualify this as a dramedy, and much like Agatha all Along references various Horror shows and movies and Wanda Vision various tv comedy shows in its structure while offering their own story, Wonder Man is a take on both Hollywood on Hollywood films, and "out of luck odd couples trying to make it within a system set against them" stories, with the one referenced the most being Midnight Cowboy (1969 movie starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, if you haven't watched it yet, which you should). (There is also a John Steinbeck flair to the tale, from both Grapes of Wrath and Mice and Men. )

The premise and story: Our hero Simon (played by the same actor who gave a great performance as Angela's husband in Watchmen the tv series, to describe his character there as unspoilery as possible) is an actor going through the gruelling audition after audtion for bit parts routine which most actors other than the very few stars out there have to live with; against him isn't just the fact he's prone to overthink everything and unable to read the room, though he does have talent and being an actor is his dream, but the fact he secretly has superpowers, and due to a catastrophic accident on a film set a few years earlier, actors with superpowers can't be hired anymore. Just after he managed to get himself fired from playing a victim in the latest American Horror Story installment, he runs into none other than Trevor Slattery (played by Ben Kingsley, enjoying himself in the role even more than he did in Iron Man 3 and Shang-Chi), recently landed in LA and trying to return to show biz. Trevor turns out to be the Ratso to Simon's Joe, the George to his Lennie, and we follow these two through auditions, improvs, filming...and their past catching up with them, because Simon isn't the only one who has a secret.

The moment when I knew I'd love the show was the scene early on when Simon and Trevor are quoting/acting favourite scenes at each other, and Trevor goes into one of Salieri's monologues from Amadeus. Note that Ben Kingsley doesn't deliver this by imitating F. Murray Abraham's performance. Or, dare I say, how he'd play it, were he cast as Salieri in an Amadeus production. He plays/quotes it the way Trevor would - an actor who in the MCU, we learn, actually did a lot of Ben Kingsley's earlier parts, like playing in East Enders, but never had the big Gandhi breakthrough, let alone the aftermath, did way too much drugs and drinks and then did what he did in Iron Man 3 . The series for all its various hilarious send-ups - that there are movies named "Cash Grab" in it is the least of it - also is great with its depiction of the actorly life. For example, the sequence when Simon, Trevor and some other contestants have to do improvs for the director of their potential breakthrough, if they get hired, has its comedy, but the actors given various situations to play out aren't hamming it up, they really try to embodiy the situation/emotion asked for.

Another enjoyable aspect of the show is that Simon's family are immigrants from Haiti (Simon was born in the US and doesn't speak but understands Creole, while his mother and the older relations often drop in and out of it) - and there isn't a single cliché involved. No voodoo. No suddenly revealed warlord past. They're simply an immigrant family.

Speaking of immigrants: like several other more recent MCU properties, this one features the "Department of Damage Control" going after supers, and here the subtext is not so sub without overhwelming the story. I mean, it's impossible not to think of current day events when you watch what they're doing, and it's important to the plot, but it doesn't overhwelm the story. Whose heart is the developing relationship between Simon and Trevor and, as different as they are from each other, their passion for acting. I did not have this on my yearly wish list, and the show was a very pleasant suruprise for me.