The End

The comedy is so black sometimes you can’t see the funny. But it’s all in the absurdities of life, and this well-written and well-acted show promises to be a satisfying watch to anyone ready for its bleakness.

The End is a meditation on what makes life worth living and how much of it is within our control. Edie is probably a natural termagant who would never have been the life and soul of the party, but her story invites us to think about how events cannot help but shape us.

The story lines are dense — too dense, at times — with issues of death, but the comedic moments are a great relief and the acknowledgments of all the absurdities of life and suffering are heartening. The writing is consistently perceptive, with intriguing notions about control, depression, and parenting. The mother-and-daughter dynamic between Edie and Kate is a particularly rich part of the show, largely thanks to the two actresses.

Offbeat and sometimes off-putting. [2 - 15 Aug 2021, p.9]

The result is a bit mixed, though Walter (a recent standout on TV projects from “The Spanish Princess” to “Succession”) and O’Connor (credits including “The Missing) do good work.

The End is provocative, and sometimes difficult to watch. It is occasionally funny. But Strauss hasn’t yet found a way to make those things co-exist.

Infuriating, cloying, and pretentious, as it puts characters into manipulative, melodramatic situations and then asks viewers to care. A dark comedy of sorts, “The End” is annoyingly superficial, and filled with writing that constantly telegraphs how much it thinks it’s saying something about life and death instead of actually bothering to do so.