The following is a spoiler-free review of HBO's Avenue 5.
HBO's Avenue 5 isn't stellar yet...but dang, if it isn't thiiiiiis close.
When Veep creator Armando Iannucci announced he'd be taking on the sci-fi genre, fans of his sharp satire yearned for Selina Meyer in space — a witty workplace comedy with punchy quips and intergalactic stakes.
Instead, viewers are getting a send-up of the space industry twice as vicious and ten times as brutal as the beloved political comedy ever got. It's a risk that doesn't pay off entirely in the first four episodes I've seen, but could set the stage for a new HBO comedy staple.
Hugh Laurie stars as Captain Ryan Clark, a commercial pilot tasked with keeping safe the 5,000 passengers aboard luxury cruise spacecraft Avenue 5. He's a charming, personable leader with the kind of charisma typically seen in Southwest flight attendants.
Clark and his crew, including Second Engineer Billie McEvoy (Lenora Crichlow), Head of Customer Relations Matt Spencer (Zach Woods), and the Earth-bound Head of Mission Control Rav Mulcair (Nikki Amuka-Bird), are set to chart an eight-week voyage around the galaxy for their high-paying passengers. But when a system failure jostles Avenue 5 off-course, that journey is extended to a whopping three years, and all hell breaks loose.
Enter Herman Judd (Josh Gad), the billionaire owner of Avenue 5, who's 99% Elizabeth Holmes and 1% Richard Branson. (That 1% is his hair.) Although Judd's aboard the same mess as everyone else, he's taking none of the responsibility and using his corporate crony Iris Kimura (Suzy Nakamura) to dodge passenger questions.
Those passengers include a couple on the brink of divorce (Jessica St. Clair and Kyle Bornheimer), a stand-up comedian there on a temporary gig (Yesterday's Himesh Patel), and a crusading customer named Karen (Rebecca Front) who will stop at nothing to get her excruciatingly docile husband Frank (Andy Buckley) home.
As tensions mount and the action heats up, things go from bad to worse. In twist after twist, it is revealed that no one aboard Avenue 5 is capable of handling the accident. Judd rebukes NASA's offers of help, the Chief Engineer is found brutally killed, and Matt (the aforementioned Head of Customer Relations) turns out to be a nihilist.
To avoid spoilers, let me just say things get...dark. Extremely dark. Like Lord of the Flies meets the Axiom from Wall-E kinda dark.
With all these plot points in the air, Avenue 5 struggles to focus its narrative, and whether it will be able to sustain so much bleak horror is tough to say. Critics were given only the first four episodes (out of nine) for review, and it at least worked that far — but it's easy to imagine a time where another cataclysmic event seems humdrum.
Still the airtight dialogue, passionate cast, and grand setting hold the promise of a comedy far greater than its inaugural installments. It's not uncommon for comedies to sputter in their first season (see The Office, Parks and Recreation, Silicon Valley, and Veep for starters), but with a little patience Avenue 5 could easily take off.
Avenue 5 premieres on HBO Sunday, Jan. 19 at 10 p.m. ET.
Topics HBO
