This show limits itself to risk-averse humour; retaining the weighty themes (in this case old age and its attendant isolation) but failing to probe or subvert them.
With a respectable joke rate – though we’re talking smirk-inducing wisecracks rather than belly laughs – and a steady stream of keenly observed details (Joanne’s palpable delight at getting the pious Noah to properly kvetch; Noah’s nice-guy credentials crumbling ever-so-slightly when Joanne finds out how he treated previous partners), Nobody Wants This is easy to buy into and easy to love.
The show is very good at keeping the suspense going, but it can’t quite stick the landing, and the storyline concludes with a preposterous gotcha. Still, there’s always next time. (In fact, Morgan’s subsequent case – although equally bananas – is better thought through, ending with a neat and surprisingly moving climax.)
The show now asks whether Will and Sylvia should continue their mildly dysfunctional friendship. This question doesn’t provide quite enough direction or dramatic substance: the storylines are circular, the bickering is repetitive and there’s a distinct streaming-era bagginess to proceedings. Still, there remains a lot to enjoy here.
Playing Nice is clearly unconcerned with interrogating real human emotions or examining what it actually means to be a parent. Instead, it’s the worst of modern television: a witless mystery overly reliant on insidious ambience and really nice houses.
Whether you want catharsis and consolation in the form of Biel and Banks trading poor taste zingers between flashbacks to their communal childhood trauma is a matter of personal taste. But when it comes to reassuring downfalls, this decent-enough drama knows how to play the game.
Despite the variety of settings – a gym, a baseball stadium, a cabaret theatre, a police awards ceremony – and a multitude of high-profile guests (among them Katie Holmes, Awkwafina, John Mulaney, Melanie Lynskey, Steve Buscemi and Alia Shawkat, enjoying herself immensely), the mechanics can feel repetitive.
The advantage is that this version is more coherent and watchable, without ever being sugary or simplistic. The great story is intact, posing its evergreen questions - when it comes to tradition, where is the line between evolution and extinction? When it comes to power, where does pragmatism bleed into surrender? – for a new audience.
Suffice to say that by the time the end credits rolled my jaw was on the floor. The plot is inordinately gripping, and there is something almost Shakespearean about its engineering; Nic and Alex’s affair sparks a domino effect of awful events that feel inevitable and unstoppable.
