Hollywood loves a navel-gazing satire about the movie business. Audiences do too, when given a good reason, from the upbeat mockery of 1952’s “Singin’ in the Rain,” to the excoriation of a studio executive in 1992’s “The Player,” to the empty platitudes about representation in 2023’s “American Fiction.” But don’t look for any of that wit or bite in HBO’s eight-episode series “The Franchise,” which is little more than the TV equivalent of a boiled piece of chicken.
“Tropic Thunder” might actually be the better comparison. The 2008 comedy was premised on the idea that filmmaking isn’t a miracle of controlled chaos, it’s just chaos. But at least it had things to say about hubris and bad judgment, whereas there are no ideas animating “The Franchise.” Just as crucially, the jokes don’t land, maybe because the show also lacks the courage to bite the hand that feeds.
Creator Jon Brown’s credits include “Veep” (from Armando Iannucci, who is also an executive producer here) and “Succession” (created by another Iannucci alum, Jesse Armstrong) and those titles might be selling points for some, but I’m not sure the smug, fast-talking snark that defines this style of comedy has legs. We can disagree, but if you watched HBO’s short-lived and far less acclaimed “Avenue 5” — yet another Iannucci project that Brown worked on — you have a sense of what “The Franchise” has in mind, which is very little at all.
Somewhere in England, a cast and crew are at work on a superhero movie called “Tecto: Eye of the Storm” and the tunnel vision of a crass Kevin Feige-esque studio executive (Darren Goldstein) has him making all kinds of harsh, panic-driven dictates. “Without our tentpole, we don’t have a tent,” he says, “and without a tent, we get eaten in our sleep by nine-year-old TikTok kids with superhero fatigue, which is not a real illness and a scam.” Instead of understanding the job at hand, the director (Daniel Brühl) treats this formulaic megaproject with the seriousness of Shakespeare.
Egos abound and no one seems particularly good at their jobs, but that’s beside the point. They are self-absorbed and mildly obnoxious, with their endless tantrums and humiliations, but rarely is their desperation funny. Everything feels like it’s in air quotes, and while the show acknowledges the sexism that exists amongst many movie fandoms, it conspicuously ignores the racism (maybe because Brown decided “Tecto” would only star white actors). It’s impossible to parse the movie’s lore, which is an intentional and a halfway decent gag, but is that what we’re going for: Halfway decent? No one says the word “streaming” once. The series could have been made 15 years ago, that’s how little it has to say about the current anxieties around the theatrical side of the business.
“The Franchise” is an exercise in watching good actors struggle through terrible scripts, namely Himesh Patel as the harried first assistant director, Lolly Adefope as the third (there is no second assistant director, which may be the most subtle of jokes) and Richard E. Grant as a seasoned theater actor who can’t believe he signed up for this garbage. Aya Cash is the producer gritting her teeth until she can move on to something less soul-crushing, and Billy Magnussen is the deeply insecure, possibly untalented star. Collectively, they more or less ignore their hapless director and it’s conspicuous that Brühl has no comedic point of view for the character. Then again, the show doesn’t either.
“The Franchise” — 1 star (out of 4)
Where to watch: 9 p.m. Sundays on HBO (and streaming on Max)
Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.
