I'm not surprised James Corden has been shouting at New York wait staff recently. He must have been in a really bad mood when he finished filming this. Like me, he probably thought it was going well for the first couple of episodes then realised too late he was being sucked downwards into a spiral of laughable pretentiousness, boredom and outrageous misjudgement.
As you can read elsewhere, after his wife has a miscarriage early in episode one, Corden's character discovers evidence on her phone that she has been unfaithful with multiple partners. He chooses to deal with this in the most ridiculous manner. After some time, we discover that he is - guess what - a temperamental genius chef. Cue obligatory scenes of shouting random dishes in the kitchen to a chorus of "Yes, chef! Yes, chef!" Original, what? Suddenly, a whole episode is devoted to a flashback. The backstory of the couple - and if you dosed Barbara Cartland up with a gallon of syrup, she could not have come up with a less plausible origins story for these two.
Soon we have another episode almost exclusively devoted to a fantasy sequence, apparently based on the worst movie ever made, Phantom Thread. Posh food, posh fashion - goodness me, could this series BE any cooler?
Sally Hawkins, chief protagonist in the latter sequence, is not only wasted here, but rubbish. As are most of the participants. The standard of acting is strictly school play.
In the final episode, the makers demonstrate just how little they know about creating entertainment, or art for that matter. Where the story should be reaching a dramatic conclusion, we get along interludes where people sit and talk at each other. We get a character, stumbling around drunk and high (and there are a few more boring things. Than following the progress of someone in that state) and right at the last we get ... A giant whale falling from the sky into the street. At this point, I did something I never do - I swore at the television. It really was that annoyingly bad. The only consolation was that we got to see the hilarious sight of Corden running (filmed in three meter bursts) I had seen this advertised on social media and all the comments without fail said they would not watch anything with Corden in it. I decided to buck the trend as I thought he was great in The Wrong Mans a few years ago. Looks like that was a blip!
Mammals is truly awful. Avoid like a drunk on a railway platform.
As you can read elsewhere, after his wife has a miscarriage early in episode one, Corden's character discovers evidence on her phone that she has been unfaithful with multiple partners. He chooses to deal with this in the most ridiculous manner. After some time, we discover that he is - guess what - a temperamental genius chef. Cue obligatory scenes of shouting random dishes in the kitchen to a chorus of "Yes, chef! Yes, chef!" Original, what? Suddenly, a whole episode is devoted to a flashback. The backstory of the couple - and if you dosed Barbara Cartland up with a gallon of syrup, she could not have come up with a less plausible origins story for these two.
Soon we have another episode almost exclusively devoted to a fantasy sequence, apparently based on the worst movie ever made, Phantom Thread. Posh food, posh fashion - goodness me, could this series BE any cooler?
Sally Hawkins, chief protagonist in the latter sequence, is not only wasted here, but rubbish. As are most of the participants. The standard of acting is strictly school play.
In the final episode, the makers demonstrate just how little they know about creating entertainment, or art for that matter. Where the story should be reaching a dramatic conclusion, we get along interludes where people sit and talk at each other. We get a character, stumbling around drunk and high (and there are a few more boring things. Than following the progress of someone in that state) and right at the last we get ... A giant whale falling from the sky into the street. At this point, I did something I never do - I swore at the television. It really was that annoyingly bad. The only consolation was that we got to see the hilarious sight of Corden running (filmed in three meter bursts) I had seen this advertised on social media and all the comments without fail said they would not watch anything with Corden in it. I decided to buck the trend as I thought he was great in The Wrong Mans a few years ago. Looks like that was a blip!
Mammals is truly awful. Avoid like a drunk on a railway platform.