Avenue 5 is a new show premiering on HBO this Sunday. If it’s not on your radar, you might want to change that, because it comes from the mind of Armando Iannucci, the guy who created the hilarious Veep, and wrote insults like this:
Both Veep and The Thick of It are political shows, but for Avenue 5, Iannucci is pivoting to something different: science fiction. “I wanted to talk about some of the emotions that are floating around, anxiety, a sense of foreboding doom about the climate, […] populism and how crowds can take on a life of their own,” Ianucci mused on the Television Critics Association press tour. “But also, I love sci-fi. So I thought, wouldn’t it be good to put this on a pressure cooker in space? That was the start of it.”
So basically, Avenue 5 is about what happens when a space-faring luxury liner — called the Avenue 5, naturally — runs into major problems during a planned three-month tour of the galaxy. Soon, the rich vacationers are at each other’s throats, and Captain Ryan Clark (Hugh Laurie) is trying to hold everything together long enough for everyone to get back home.
Laurie is probably best known these days for playing the lead role on House, but before that, he worked on British comedies like A Bit of Fry & Laurie. He also played a conniving presidential hopeful on Veep, so doing comedy is like coming home. “I suppose it’s where my heart always lay,” Laurie said of absurdist-style comedy, “but I’m not sure if it’s heart or annoying anxiety. It brought back the thrill, but also the fear of trying to do something funny. […] There’s lots of bad funny, but good funny is hard to do.”
That’s true enough, but with Ianucci’s track record, I’m more than willing to at least give this show a chance.
I even wonder if this show couldn’t blow up in a way that Veep — which won a lot of awards but was never a massive hit — didn’t. Genre stuff is hot right now, and a good sci-fi comedy could be exactly what people are looking for. If you believe Josh Gad, who plays the ultra-rich Avenue 5 investor Herman Judd, the show might also be drawing from another big genre hit. “We like to think of ourselves as the Game of Thrones of comedies,” Gad said, teasing a possible penchant for killing off characters. “I like that you think there’s quite a big body count — just you wait.”
Suzy Nakamura, who plays Avenue 5 associate owner Iris Kimura, echoed that feeling. “We feel we can be fired at any time because Armando can just kill us. That really keeps us on our toes.”
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h/t Indiewire