Avenue 5

Avenue 5 is not just good – it’s galactically good.

Avenue 5 gets sharper with each of the four episodes sent to critics, which bodes well for what lies ahead, when the bulk of the world-building is done. It isn’t Veep, sure, but there are traces of Selina Meyer in Ryan; both are smug, two-faced charlatans entrusted with far more power than they deserve. The show also benefits from Iannucci’s dark, profane, literary sensibility.

Their ambitions are relatively modest in a day when Greatness Is All. But greatness can be overrated, and both series [Avenue 5 and Medical Police] are expertly played, with more than a modicum of good jokes and enough plot to keep you going, made by intelligent people unafraid to look dumb.

The more the series embraces its own twisted instincts, the better it gets — scenes in the third and fourth episodes are more surprising, more engaging, and even smooth themselves out while Iannucci ratchets up the madness.

The show threatens to become unwieldy at certain points, as Iannucci tries to keep all the many characters — and their secrets — in the mix while establishing the world of the future and moving the story line forward. But then “Veep” took a little while to come together, and I have faith in Iannucci’s guiding hand.

One of the show’s major problems, through four of the season’s nine episodes, is that it’s hard to tell what the targets are. ... These characters banter and kvetch and berate one another in dialogue that’s cutting and foul-mouthed and largely flat, or at least not as sharp as we’ve come to expect from these writers.

Hugh Laurie — steering the (space)ship here as bearded Captain Ryan Clark — can’t save this HBO series from its over-reliance on leaden jokes and cardboard-cutout characters.

I can only guess the low scores here are SJW sores. This is an excellently written show, with great lines and delivery. A worthy gap-filler until the next season of The Orville drops.

It's baffling that this show was created by Armando Iannucci who also created 'Veep'. Maybe he wanted to do something silly and hoped to get away with it due to the success of 'Veep'. Well, it worked, kind of. Not the show itself. That didn't really work. The first episode is not good and the show only gets slowly better after that, but not really good enough. Too many of the characters are not well written, especially Josh Gad's character. Yes, he's very successful and rich, yet kind of dumb at the same time. We get it. How much jokes can you get out of such a one note character? I fear, we're gonna find out. The rest of of the characters are based on good ideas but aren't well developed. So they lack wit and poignancy. The humor actually provided is a little too dry for my taste. Or simply not funny enough? I'm very generous with my rating only because of episode 8, the "We're not really in space" episode. I hope there's more where that came from. Episode 9 was ok and I waited for the next episode until I realized that this episode was the season's anticlimactic finale. Very underwhelming. Well, the show got renewed for a second season, waddaya know. Let's hope for the best or maybe they'll at least correct the biggest problems...

On paper this looked very exciting but unfortunately it failed to deliver. I've been a big fan of Armando Iannucci's writing for a long time but I feel he failed to live up to his high standards here. Most episodes might raise a smirk or two but nothing that extended to a laugh. Some of the casting was poor I thought. Josh Gad as a Jack Black wannabe just didn't work. The normally excellent Rebecca Front seemed out of place playing an American "Karen" as was her on screen husband David Wallace, sorry I mean Andy Buckley. Also some others seemed uncomfortable in comedic roles and personally I wouldn't trust them to deliver an Amazon package never mind a funny line. On the plus side, Nikki Amuka-Bird as Rav was very good and was one of the few here to come out of it with any credit.

I am failing to find any evidence of humor in this show. It has nice looking set design but way too many people just wondering around creating visual clutter. Josh Gad’s character seems like he was written for Jack Black to play.

What a great concept when you just look at the trailer! An inept "Space Crew" on a Cruise Ship that seemingly is just a "Sailship" that got launched on a space cruise by way of "Slingshotting" (read it up, kids, it's all on dschoodschle!) - I was actually excited for it, and not for the sole reason of Hugh Laurie being in it. And created by Armando Iannucci, of "Veep" fame, probably one of the best Ensemble Comedies out there together with Parks and Rec. And then... it aired. And my immediate thought after suffering through Episode 1 was: Did someone use Men in Black's "Neuralyzer" device to wipe Iannucci's Brain of all its comic genius visible in "Veep"? Not sure that due to the insane success of that latter show he got a "free shot" from HBO to "do anything he wanted"? If so, they clearly shouldn't have given him that blank cheque. Avenue 5 is tedious, below mediocre especially in its presentation of its forcedly weird and dumb Characters, spouting inane dialog. The writing and "character arch" to me is so unfunny and on a true cringe level that it must have made the actors regret to ever have put the ink on the contract to participate. Huge waste of acting talent in case of Hugh Laurie and a "good riddance" to most of the other faces of the cast since the script is so bad it could've come from South Park's "FunnyBot 2000" himself. No really, you have to listen to the dialog yourself and think: "is this what I pay subscription for? Have adults come up with this level of mediocrity or was it the scriptwriters children successfully sneaking in their version of what they thought would be funny jokes and exposition?" Since I hear Avenue 5 even got renewed for a Season 2, HBO's execs indebtedness to Iannucci does not seem over just yet. What's over is my infatuation of the idea that something like Avenue 5 could ever see the light of day out of what is usually a consistent and very strong-quality content channel like HBO. This reminds me of Netflix's "Space Force" quality level desaster. It goes right in the same shelf as "the show which couldn't" (excite me). Hard pass for me. But if you dare, judge for yourself. Maybe I'm just a spoiled brat that wants to have "Veep" quality from HBO exclusively... I know, the entitlement!