Amazon Prime | ★★★✩✩

I love being the TV critic for the JC, so it’s scary writing these words that may well lead to my dismissal. I voted Labour in 2019. JOKE! No, it’s worse. I’ve never watched The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I’m sorry, I know how betrayed you must feel. And I’ve got little defence, in fact the evidence only incriminates me further; I’m a Jew. I’m a stand-up comedian. I’m obsessed with mid-20th century American stand-up. I’ve binge-watched every other TV series ever.

So what is it that’s held me back since 2017, when all my friends began insisting I’d love this new show about a 50s New York Jewish housewife starting standup, and later when all the awards and Emmys seemed to confirm it? Something just felt… off.

I’ve never even seen a clip or a trailer, it’s the posters. Mrs. Maisel always looks, too happy. Like comedy is a game filled with fun and scrapes. And after 20 years as a stand-up, with much fun and a fair few scrapes, I can state that no matter the era or sex, what binds and defines all comedians, just like Jews, isn’t the fun and scrapes.

Don’t believe me? Check out the excellent documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work which covers similar ground. Or Amy Schumer’s equally insightful Expecting Amy. Compulsion, grit, a tinge of trauma, are what push them ever onwards, and it’s never a game. Which, like an emergency doctor avoiding watching ER, is why I suspected Mrs Maisel was just going to wind me up. And now, having finally taken the plunge straight into the Season 4 opener, surely this review was always going to turn out to be an exercise in confirmation bias right? Right.

Miriam ‘Midge’ Maisel is onstage talking. The nightclub audience laugh, whoop and cheer. But she’s not telling jokes, or saying or doing anything funny, she’s talking. American audiences are nice, but not that nice. My blood boils. Turns out it’s a flash forward to what appears to be the theme of this season, Midge’s mission to find her “voice.” Which we’ve now seen that she achieves, thus removing any tension, especially when she later figures out that the secret is to just be herself and riff. WHICH IS NOT HOW STAND UP WORKS AT ALL. It’s the Tom Hanks travesty Punchline all over again. My blood evaporates.

Trying to put comedy aside, I can certainly see why there are people who love it. The characters and actors who play them are all charming. The surrealist turns stand out. There’s witty dialogue. The situation and plot is interesting and recreations of the sets and costumes are meticulous. Yet I still found the sum of its parts slightly grating, a bit too stagey, overdone and whacky. There’s a set piece on a ferris wheel on Coney Island that perfectly encapsulates the problem, you’re either the kind of person who’ll be won over by it, or you’ll wince. I guess like stand-up, TV reviewing is subjective. And you can only hope you’ll be asked back.