When I learned that Seth Rogen had created and stars in a new TV series about the movie-making industry in Hollywood, my eyes might as well have bugged out in cartoonish delight, big Magen Davids flashing in my pupils. The Studio didn’t advertise itself as a Jewish show, but it didn’t have to. Rogen playing a neurotic Hollywood executive in a showbiz satire is about as Jewish as it gets.
The Apple TV+ series follows a year in the life of Rogen’s Matt Remick, the newly appointed head of Continental Studios, a legacy production company labouring to remain relevant in the era of streaming. Remick and his crew of infighting executives, played by Ike Barinholtz, Kathryn Hahn and Chase Sui Wonders, must balance the soul-sucking demands of an increasingly materialistic industry with the artistic whims of egotistical actors and directors, all the while competing with and against one another in pursuit of cinematic acclaim.
Given the stacked cast, which includes the unassailably brilliant Catherine O’Hara as the former head of Continental, Patty Leigh, and Bryan Cranston as the studio’s cocaine-shovelling overlord Griffin Mill, The Studio was bound to deliver, at the very least, some high-quality performances.
It does, and then some.
The series begs the very pertinent question of whether box office movies, the kind that is green-lit by major studios almost entirely as cash grabs, can also be original and “important,” something which the film-obsessed Remick, who considers himself not just an executive but an “artist”, is keen to answer in the affirmative.
“I’ve heard you are really into artsy fartsy filmmaking bulls***, that you’re obsessed with actors and directors liking you rather than being obsessed with making this studio as much money as possible,” Cranston’s Griffin Mill accuses Remick in episode one, revealing our protagonist’s kryptonite within the first ten minutes of the series.
Bryan Cranston and Seth Rogen in 'The Studio'. (Photo: Apple TV+)[Missing Credit]
When Mill instructs Remick to put together a movie about the Kool-Aid man after securing a deal to buy the rights, Remick’s task is set in motion – and the chaos of The Studio begins.
The show features a never-ending carousel of celebrity cameos, each playing a larger-than-life version of themselves: from Martin Scorsese to Zoë Kravitz, Ron Howard to Ted Sarandos, Anthony Mackie to Greta Lee. With real actors and directors in the mix, it is even easier to get swept up in the high-stakes atmosphere of The Studio, which depicts an industry consistently on the verge of either explosive success or utter disaster.
At turns painfully cringe-worthy (thanks to the mortifying lengths to which Remick goes in order to be admired by his influential peers), panic-inducing, hilarious and heartfelt, The Studio lampoons the very industry to which it simultaneously pays homage.
One episode sees Remick investigating a theft on the studio lot, mimicking the neo-noir style of the 1970s Roman Polanski film Chinatown. Another episode cleverly explores the “oner”, a film technique in which a scene is completed in one take without splicing; the episode itself is shot in one take, following Remick as he visits the set of a film where the crew is frantically trying to do the same before the sun goes down.
Written and directed by Rogen and his longtime collaborator (and buddy from Hebrew school) Evan Goldberg, the series naturally includes more than a few nods to the prevalence of Jews in Hollywood. How could it not? But Rogen’s character being Jewish is less of a plot point than an acknowledgement of both Rogen’s own typecasting as an actor as well as the demographic reality of the industry. With or without the Jew jokes, of which there are several, the series would have Jewishness implicitly stamped all over it thanks to our people’s exceptional contribution to Hollywood.
The Studio is as perfect as a TV series could be and will surely stand out as among the best on offer this year. If we needed any further proof that Jews are the driving force behind the entertainment industry, Rogen just delivered it.
Episodes of The Studio are available from 26 March on Apple TV
★★★★★
