‘The Lowdown’ Is That Show. Plus, ‘Heat 2’ Hype Meter and ‘House of Guinness.’

26:04I know. He was shaking couch cushions to find the last million to get it over the line. And now that he has Paramount, it seems like he's like, oh no, now the vault opens. And now I'm going to buy Warner Brothers, and buy this show, buy the Duffers, and now he's giving James Mangold overall. It seems like you're right. Paramount's a rival, but they're a willingness to spend. They may cut CBS News down to basically being three hot take artists, but it does seem like they are spending a ton of money on actual shows and movies, which I think is a good thing for what's left of Hollywood.

26:47Andy Greenwald:Is 60 Minutes going to be like that OZY.com? Where is that dude being like, I've talked to Lisa Ling or whatever. And everyone's like, this is a success, clearly. Anyway, Trump pardoned him. The fun thing is about the Paramount deal is maybe he really was just scraping things together a year and a half ago. But then all these weird coincidences happened. Like his dad just got permission to buy TikTok. So it seems like, I don't know, like fortune favors the bold, I guess. Why are we more like that? I don't know. We should have thrown in just like a, we just like a cheeky offer for this Nicole Kidman show.

27:23Andy Greenwald:What was the show that we were bidding? Our listeners will remember there. Oh no, we wanted to be heads of AMC. I still think that's a legitimate thing. I do think that they're like, honestly, my pitch is why not? The Anne Rice universe manages itself. God bless. We will retain the leadership structure behind the vampire shows. Like that is my first order of business. Everything else. Just let us. What's the first AMC catalog show that you would want to reboot? Remember When. Yeah. Their first ever show before Mad Men. No, well, like, I think that we could get a little cheeky in the international marketplace, like AMC has been doing with, like, spy shows and things and co-pros.

28:04Andy Greenwald:I think that there might be some opportunities to do the versions of, like, mid-AMC shows, like um uh lodge 49 or um the one that i never remember the name of the bob odenkirk uh lucky hank yep um i don't think either of the shows were complete successes but i also don't think they were failures and i think they scratched a niche that does exist in tv and can be done at a price point it's that kind of middle of the road thinking that's going to get us to the top i think 100 the other thing is though i i would green light the sally draper in the downtown 81 This is why we've been put on this planet.

28:42To see Heat 2 come out and to put Sally Draper in the mud club. Yep. Let's just do it.

28:48Andy Greenwald:We'll make that show. Vote for us. Or we'll cut the government in on a sweetheart deal. That's right. Let's take a quick break and we'll go talk about the lowdown in House of Guinness. This episode is brought to you by Boris Head. What if we told you the taste of deep fried turkey is now available at your local deli? Well, Boris Head just did that. Bursting with flavor, perfectly seasoned with that indulgent taste that usually means planning your whole day around it. Presenting the Friars Turkey Breast only from Boar's Head. Backyard tradition now available behind the counter. Visit your local deli today.

29:23Discover the craftsmanship behind every bite. Boar's Head, committed to craft since 1905. Did you know Sam's Club isn't a store? It's actually a club with cool finds and like a whole community. It's a club. Of course, Jason. It's in the name. Sam's Club. Oh, yeah. Come join us. Sam's Club. Let's talk about episodes three and four of The Lowdown. Four was especially lovely to me, directed by Macon Blair and written by Duffy Boudreaux. Macon Blair is a frequent collaborator with Jeremy Saulnier. He also plays the lawyer in this series in The Lowdown. And And Duffy Boudreau is a name you may remember from especially the written by credit in Barry.

30:08He is a frequent collaborator with Bill Hader. Bill Hader and Duffy Boudreau, also from Tulsa, much like Sterling Harjo. So kind of a family affair here. And I was thinking about how one term we used to use during the era of truly peak prestige television was the idea of long-form series television being novelistic. I think we referred frequently to people called The Wire novelistic and its storytelling. Even its creator David Simon did that. Even its creator David Simon. The Lowdown really does feel novelistic for all the good reasons and even some of the reasons where it's like, sometimes I have a hard time settling down enough to read a novel.

30:57And there are times when I turn the low down on and I'm like, oh, okay, like we are moving at a slower pace and we are moving at a different pace than like most of my consumption is moving at over the course of my day when I have my phone in my hand for 11 hours of it. And it takes a second to get into the water, you know, and to like let it wash over you. and this is a really good example this episode four which is called short on cowboys uh it kind of starts three times you know it's got this sort of fantastical tim blake nelson narration it's got a a kind of lazy awesome 10 minute scene at a diner between a father a daughter and a mother um and then it really gets going and you get like basically a half hour short film about a tryst between Triplehorn's Betty Jo character and Ethan Hawke's Lee character.

31:59Andy Greenwald:You could call it Before Hangover. That's right, because they do drink more tequila than I think most people east of Tulsa can handle. I felt quite ill, honestly, watching it. I felt concerned. What did you think of this episode? How are you feeling about the show in general? I want to talk specifically about this episode and also last week's, which we didn't really touch on, about the Beluga Brothers. But I want to say something broader. I want to give my campaign speech here, which is to say, if you listen to this podcast and if you've listened to it for a while, chances are you like television a certain way.

32:34Andy Greenwald:It doesn't mean we all, we may not all agree. I'm like that brewery owner in Maine. Like, I'm just bringing people together here. We're one country. We may not agree on all of the shows that we love or what we want to see week to week on television. And I think there are people who are indulging our love of task and they think we only like it because we're from Philadelphia, which is only maybe 10 % true. I actually think it's approaching like masterpiece status. And we'll talk about that on Monday. But I do think that one common thread that unites all of us is that we want television to be good and interesting and for lack of a better word, brave and brave could mean something like adolescence, which is both aesthetically brave and also I think creatively brave and certainly thematically brave.

33:15Andy Greenwald:or it could just mean purely aesthetically brave like the lowdown is. And so what I want to ask everyone in this great big beautiful country of ours is a simple thing. And I feel like we don't use this as a bully pulpit enough. I want all of you to watch the lowdown. I want you to record it on your, download it from your Hulu app or put it on your TiVo or watch it on television. I don't even know what matters. Spank a new Maxell cassette, put it in the VHS. Because this is what we are always talking about. It is absolutely idiosyncratic. It is unique. It is funny. It is heartfelt. It is stakesy.

33:51Andy Greenwald:It is exciting. It is surprising. It gives actors great opportunities to work and to bring joy. like Kyle McLaughlin, Keith David, Tim Blake Nelson, Michael Hitchcock, like an all-star team of those guys doing elite work. Gene Triplehorn in this episode, especially Scott Shepard, just people who are a friend of the pod, Tracy Letts, just people willing to show up and work because they know that they're working with a creator in Sterling who's going to take care of them and showcase them and give them stuff to do. And also, you know, I've been railing for years against the auteur theory of television.

34:28But I do think that Sterling Harjo

34:31Andy Greenwald:is the kind of auteur that we need and that we want. Because there are elements in the show that, like you said, that kind of just don't make sense if you watch normie TV all the time. Like Tim Blake Nelson narrating from the afterlife and then sitting next to Ethan Hawke and his daughter and they both look at him. Or the way it becomes like double indemnity briefly when it's already been something else for a long time. And then it cuts to, you know, like the security guard dudes doing a rap on youtube in front of in front of a car that's on fire there are moments on the show where i'm like oh yeah i mean obviously sterling likes twin peaks like the moment in episode four when um betty what's her name betty uh she has a second name that's betty joe triple horn's character betty joe opens the door to the room where tim blake nelson's character supposedly or probably killed himself and i'm like oh this is a twin peaks moment the way this room is lit the way the sound design is a twin peaks moment uh ethan hawk's character introducing himself as agent cooper in the third episode exactly but also you can tell that sterling loved twin peaks and he also loved twin peaks the return because kyle is giving some mr c energy when he gets furious in this episode of this face i say that not because it's cool that a guy who makes a tv show likes the same stuff that i do i'm saying it because it's not fucking pastiche this is a guy who knows how to make films knows how to tell a story lives in a place knows things and is generous enough to share them with us and has been given a platform to just fucking leave it all out there.

35:58Andy Greenwald:And I like you're saying, I have no idea if it's succeeding or failing on commercial terms, but I think so far it is 100 % succeeding in artistic terms. And sometimes we got to show up and support that shit. Yeah. And I think that the payoff for this show at the end of every episode that I've watched that I would imagine at the end of this season itself is going to be like that of finishing a great novel where you know it's unlike anything else legal you can really do with your brain you know it is really the most enriching beautiful three-dimensional experience and imaginative experience you can have and this show feels different than weekly mystery box puzzle shows um you know and it's really lovely to have this and task on at the same time because I think it shows the huge spectrum of not only enjoyment, but intellectual stimulation and emotional kind of fulfillment you can get from crime shows and from crime fiction because you're putting these characters, many of whom are pretty normal people in broken situations and putting them in extraordinary circumstances and asking them to make these incredibly complex and consequential moral decisions about what to do next and what to do to fix things that have happened in the past, to fix things that will happen in the future.

37:21And they bring out really amazing performances. And you talked about the incredible murderer's row of supporting actors, but this is among Ethan Hawke's best performances. I wanted to say that too. And the reason why I think that is it is both a fucking movie star Paul Newman performance and it is also like a uh freak like used bookstore guy performance and he's able to have both an incredibly cool charismatic attractive quality to him while also being the kind of guy you find flipping through records you know or through used books at a store in Tulsa and it's kind of remarkable to watch him cook like on this level i mean obviously you and i were fans of good lord bird we've been fans of his work for such a long time but this is such a titanic undertaking he has to do so much shit in every scene he has to be a lover he has to be a fighter he has to be afraid he has to be a convincing writer and he has to be a comedian uh and he does it all so well he's like he's such an

38:27Andy Greenwald:interesting performer and we've we love him for a long time but like he never quite fits right because he's a freak. Like he's too weird and too obsessed with the little, like, you know, the he's like, speaking of crime novels, like there's always a scene like in a classic George Pelicanos novel where someone drops the cocaine and then they're like going through the carpet fibers. Like that's how Ethan Hawke approaches the script. And often movies that aren't directed by Richard Linklater don't know what to do with that. You know, like it's, it's too much and it's also diffuse and yet he's handsome and charismatic and famous enough to lead a television show in the prestige era.

39:04Andy Greenwald:Sterling knows how to work with him, which I think means to collaborate with him because he, he fits the frame on the show in a way that suits everyone involved. And it's really exciting to watch. Now I'm not saying the show is perfect, which is one of the reasons why I like it. The third episode, and again, this might've been the jet lag talking, but the third episode is challenging. And I think it would be challenging for, again, for normies who are like, you know, want to pick up this this flag and carry it for a little while um the setup is essentially that in order to pursue this reckless investigation of a potential suicide of the uh estranged brother gubernatorial candidate they must drive to uh ethan hawk's character lee his daughter and his frenemy michael hitchcock's character who is a rival antiques dealer must drive to a lake somewhere outside of Tulsa and Oklahoma and somehow either woo or confuse or distract a scary or like aggressive Mexican-American antiques dealer who has come into the possession of a box of the dead brothers Jim Thompson novels.

40:10Yes, which include letters that the guy has been writing or diary entries that the guy has been writing that will then help him elliptically piece together a massive conspiracy.

40:20Andy Greenwald:And if you think this sounds like, and I feel like it's okay to spoil it because I'm either convincing you or you've already seen it. If you think that sounds complicated, what if I told you that what actually happens is Michael Hitchcock's character just drinks whiskey and alone in a diner while the daughter meets the scary antiques dealer and steals the books while Ethan Hawke steals a park ranger jacket and then gets in enveloped in a violent backwoods caviar theft but also which it's also a love story about poetry dude that's fucking nuts and i think that everyone involved is like i i guess john landgraf was on set on alien earth that day when we greenlit this you know what i mean but god bless them for green lighting it and and giving him the space to do this it's it's worth it when you have the chance to invest in something like this both as a a network and as a viewer Usually with a mystery show like this, I think you and I would spend a fair amount of time talking about the narrative.

41:19I'm more here for Ethan Hawke walking down the street and someone asks him what his favorite Michael Curtiz movie is. I know. And when something like that is happening and the way that even Macon Blair films that and the way that they sound design it where it's kind of happening in an alt-mini way. a conversation is happening as Ethan Hawke is walking by, but Ethan Hawke is being asked to weigh in on this debate between a used record store guy and his customer. And they're like, what's your favorite Michael Curtiz movie? And he's like, what? What are you talking about? And he's just like, oh, I thought you were going to say Boy From Oklahoma.

41:57And he's like, no, Captain Blood. And it's just a second, but I'm like, I can't fucking believe this is happening. Like, you know, this is the dream of the 90s is back. Life goes on.

42:09Andy Greenwald:Well, Pavement's more popular than ever. Maybe these clothes we like are finally coming back into fashion. The sort of recurring bit that this used record store proprietor has is that he is getting rid of loiterers. That there are all these people in this strip in Tulsa where Lee's bookstore and this record store and a diner and a law officer. Somebody was loitering outside your store, so I told him no loitering. And this show is loitering. This show is just just fucking hanging out and you may have to like adjust your brain a little bit when you when you do that because i don't know that we hang out with television as much anymore especially 55 minute mystery dramedies we're more like oh yeah i like to hang out with my sitcom buddies for 22 minutes and then get the fuck out or white knuckle it with my pals in the pit yes like i love these people so it's worth it i want an extremity of emotion i don't want to have to think i don't want to have to like feel i don't want to have to pay attention i want to be able to kind of either this is a like i want a drug experience i either want an upper or a downer it's also to go back to the novelistic example it's okay to to to love disliking something like these really these emotions are closely related and like there are a lot of books like I talked about on the pod the other week like I had um because you you you just the way you casually just reveal things about yourself only on this podcast um that you've read every Robert Stone novel and I was like excuse me I'm right here on the other end of this text thread so I went and I got this Robert Stone novel called Children of Light and I'm here to tell you as I told you of her text it's awful yeah but I loved it yeah and I'm not saying the lowdown is awful I'm just saying it's cool to engage with art that inflames you one way or the other.

44:03Andy Greenwald:And, and my guess is, and I don't have any, anything to back this up. I'd be curious if people would write to our email address or whatever and say, I'm curious if there is a percentage of people who are like, I love the lowdown one. I'd love the lowdown two. And I was out on lowdown three. I'm curious about that. I think maybe it would be people who are like, I've gotten to lowdown three and it's just too sleepy or it's too, I, I, you know, I maybe, maybe they don't give a shit about Michael Curtiz and Junior Kimbrough and they're just like watching people drink coffee for 11 minutes and read letters to each other is you know I've got I've got like a come on I gotta keep on a schedule here as someone with a 12 year old who's recently very coffee curious I really felt seen by that so what do you do with that do you know what she loves right now is um decaf yeah but there is a trace amount of caffeine in that right yeah and she likes matcha lattes those are really big with the kids um so i try to cut the i let that happen but usually like pre 1 p.m you know i used to just drink the sweetest possible but the largest possible dunkin donuts so it would just be like french vanilla with french vanilla creamer and sugar yeah i mean the thing is like i understand that they made the coffee itself taste like french vanilla you added extra i want to be clear when i say that she likes coffee what she likes is a warm mug giant mug of milk with like some light decaf coffee flavoring yes um last thing i feel like we've said our piece but you mentioned duffy boudreau um i won't spoil the end of four since we're kind of like getting hopefully getting people to watch it but there's a sequence a violent sequence at the end of four that is very berry core it really reminded me of berry and it's a mix of like the macabre and the intense and the outrageous and funny that's a great shout A much different animal is House of Guinness, which we haven't talked about.

45:53It came out a couple of weeks ago on Netflix. It's the new show from Stephen Knight, which I think I will sort of generally tar with this brush of it's Stephen Knight's succession. You know, okay. Effort.

46:09Andy Greenwald:It's about. Do you want to give background to Stephen Knight? Because he, when you say the new Stephen Knight show, there's often two a year. Seven of them. Yeah. Stephen Knight is one of the most prolific and successful TV creators that we have right now. He is essentially like England's answer to Taylor Sheridan in some ways. He recently writes these rather muscular, historically minded, often period piece TV shows. I love him. He is the creator of Rogue Heroes, which is my favorite series by him. But obviously, I also am very, very into Peaky Blinders. And evidently so is everybody else, because there is not only a Peaky Blinders movie, but a new Peaky Blinders spinoff series in the making that should arrive at some time in the next couple of years.

46:54And that is set in the aftermath of World War II, which is pretty exciting because Peaky Blinders is really good. And it's also a really interesting historical time period. He also, just last year, put out a show that I never got a chance to see because I don't think it came out here called This Town, which was about the two-tone movie in England. Oh yeah, that never did come out here, officially, yeah.

47:16Andy Greenwald:But he also did A Thousand Blows, didn't he? Yeah, and A Thousand Blows. And he's a prolific screenwriter in films. Writing, you know, he was working on a Star Wars movie. He's, you know, just always, always, always writing. So House of Guinness is a show which I think you could be uncharitable and be like, oh, he saw a succession and was like, I can do that. And it is about the death of the patriarch of the Guinness family. I believe it's sort of in the early 20th century. and the efforts of his children to keep his alcohol empire together as Guinness is sort of becoming a global brand. And Ireland is facing a moment of revolution and also a temperance movement and also the kids themselves are at each other's throats.

48:06Andy Greenwald:Would you, if you had the ability, would you travel back in time to the Guinness Patriarch's deathbed and as he's passing Whisper in his ear, a full explanation of dickheads splitting the G at the Devonshire, just on Instagram? Like, would you just let them know? See, I can tell you're getting a little bit too crabby because a year and a half ago, you were like, I can't wait to be a dickhead splitting the G at Devonshire. We are the problem. I think we're self-aware. I'm just saying, it's funny watching a show, and maybe this is why Guinness allowed their trademark and their name to be in it, because it is based on historical fact, but it's very salacious and and out there but like they won like guinness has never ever ever been trendier or more popular yes so congratulations so historically minded but historically loose with tone i would call this show and i i i you know in rogue heroes i enjoy the rock and roll approach to a world war ii movie and kind of um imagining the dirty dozen but with the white stripes playing in the background is essentially like how rogue heroes kind of presents things the house of guinness um is really chaotic to start with uh you know there's a lot going on you are introduced to about 15 to 16 people instantaneously and they are only on screen for like you know 10 seconds at a time and they're all beating the shit out of each other out of each other or doing drugs or drinking or having hangovers or they're related and even though it's the early 20th century the fontaines dc are playing many times yeah a lot of needle drops but there's also a lot of like animations or animatics like explaining things and saying like power intrigue yeah also this is the history of ireland at this period i it's it's a very noisy noisy, noisy show.

50:02We were talking about whether or not TV needs a better hype machine and I almost wonder whether Stephen Knight backed into some weird thing which it feels like you're watching, the first episode especially, and I've watched two and I think I will keep watching it because it is definitely the kind of thing that I like to throw on at 10pm and just veg out and watch.

50:23Andy Greenwald:I find it very stressful. The first episode though is like a pitch deck for the show. Yes, that's well said. And it almost feels like a proof of concept that he made for Netflix. And Netflix was like, that's the first episode. And maybe that works. Maybe that's a good idea. I mean, it feels like an interesting collision between the rock and roll history sensibility that you're talking about, A, a kind of British television aesthetic that I want to ask you about, because I feel like you watch a lot more of this than I do generally, and Netflix's global domination strategy. Like the way this show starts, it's clearly a Netflix show.

51:04Andy Greenwald:Um, it, it yells at you about what it is so quickly that you're almost like held captive by it. Um, that didn't really work for me. Um, I'll say that like Stephen Knight is a very clever writer and he's incredibly accomplished and just like in his bones knows how to build story almost out of anything. It seems like he's like a savant and there's so many good actors in it as there tend to be in Stephen Knight productions like Anthony Boyle, who is one of the best young actors working. That's James Norton. Right. I knew I recognized him. He we saw Anthony Boyle in say nothing recently. Yeah. And the Lincoln, the Lincoln assassination show.

51:49He was right.

51:50Andy Greenwald:And Lewis Partridge is one of the stars. And Lewis Partridge is famous for being the male boyfriend in the Enola Holmes movies, which get a lot of burn in my household. Yeah. And also dating Olivia Rodrigo. Just a steaming hot cup of decaf in an Enola Holmes movie. It sounds like a Saturday night. Don't make me more homesick than I already am. Um, and then also like a couple other fun things on the margins, like Jack Leeson, who famously retired from acting or took a step back from acting, um, after game of Thrones, uh, uh, returning to the screen in this in a fun way. um i have no hate in my heart for this but i have to say like there's a certain aesthetic and it's not so much the needle drops although they're they do feel really glib especially when it's just like things are about to get serious lads and then fontaine's drops and they people knock each other's teeth out like it's like what are the actual this is violence do you know what i mean and after watching like two men grapple with their sins in task on sunday nights like it's sort of hard to see this kind of like savagery without any reflection whatsoever.

52:51Andy Greenwald:Um, but there's an aesthetic and maybe this is the Stephen Knight rock and roll history aesthetic, but it, the show, it used to be like 20, 30 years ago, British imports like BBC one original or things that ended up on masterpiece theater or mystery. They all looked a certain way, whether it was the lighting or the camera, it just didn't look like American television. Now that's just a global television aesthetic, but this is the particularly British flavor of it. And it, and it it's leached into shows that um we've loved i think there was a little bit of it in the pursuit of uh oh god i'm blank pursuit of love for the emily mortimer series which i adored but there's also a ton of it in um you you have better recall than i do and i'm jet lagged but like other shows like this thousand blows for example or other non-stephen knight shows yeah and it's it doesn't honestly feel significantly different than mob land you know like there is a Yeah, it's a certain recognizable aesthetic that I'm just not.

53:44Andy Greenwald:It's serviceable and it works, but it does seem like a mass market export product right now, like Guinness itself. And I'm not vibing with it. So there is just something really interesting. I called it succession, Stephen Knight succession. And there's obvious reasons for that because of the plot setup. But there is also a few quiet moments in the opening episodes of inter-family banter that I think doesn't necessarily reach Jesse Armstrong levels of symphonic put-downs, but it's kind of a different show. It's a different show than the one that seems to be taking place in the same sound stages that they shot Peaky Blinders and is a lot of rock and roll while people are throwing Molotov cocktails around.

54:30this the the stuff that i'm here for is the is the family stuff so i'll i'll continue to check it out but i'm glad you at least gave a look and i do think that there's something to the the universal british export aesthetic that we're we're arriving at yeah i mean it's just

54:48Andy Greenwald:and maybe there's maybe that's a more natural segue from the thing we're saying about the lowdown because certainly a lot of the homogenization of global television and global television made for Netflix is because of Netflix. And it's also because of an American aesthetic that has, well, I mean, I think that the ultimate test is like the lowdown dares you to be bored. Like they're like, you need, if you may think that this scene is going on too long, but this is actually how people talk. And, uh, house of Guinness is like, you will never get bored because the scene changes every 37 seconds. The other thing that I think that differentiates, I mean, a lot of things differentiate the lowdown from house of Guinness.

55:24Andy Greenwald:I mean, the only thing that they have in common is I think alcohol. But the other thing about the lowdown that feels really refreshing at this moment is that it doesn't have to do anything. Right. And so much of the way we talk about contemporary television is we talk about it in terms of yes, sticking the landing or, um, you know, answering the questions or, uh, servicing X, Y, or Z thing. And it does become this weird, like exam structure where we're like, okay, well, what does alien earth have to do to keep us interested or make us feel like it was worth it? What does it have? What did Noah Hawley have to do to please the like the deep xenomorph heads like yourself and then also bring in noobs like that's a lot of have tos yeah and it's such a privilege to watch a show that absolutely didn't have to do anything except just march to the beat of its own twangy drummer drummers aren't twangy let's wrap it up there guitars are twangy thanks to kaya i'm fading but i'm good i'm good and kai we'll be back on monday greenwald will be with me to talk about task uh online but like we may I have some extra stuff on Monday.

56:25So everybody have a great weekend. Enjoy task on Sunday night and we'll see you on Monday.