When Woody Allen cited all the great things in life in the film 'Manhattan', the critic Pauline Kael said that he had assembled a list and not lived. That is a paraphrase but it is true of this pale simpering simulacrum of a biography in this TV series.
A writer takes a known form - the biography, and turns it into the legend of scoundrel through the 20th century. Trouble with that is it becomes ironic by necessity as the viewer is already wise to its genre; so to make it interesting it has to be a joke inside another joke.
The book may have offered better qualities in narration but in a TV series this is very superficial montage driven sequence of episodes. Sure, it looks lovely, but the middle classes are easily taken in with nice costumes, locations, and people eating food with olive oil and garlic. And it must be about time to have another martini.
Unfortunately it's a waste of time. It has moments of emotion which one sees as being close to real but it really fails because it has to move on to the next silly sex, drink, failed novel adventure.
Oh well; real life can be just as disappointing, but at least in this series you can have another double of pure grain alcohol to forget about it.
A writer takes a known form - the biography, and turns it into the legend of scoundrel through the 20th century. Trouble with that is it becomes ironic by necessity as the viewer is already wise to its genre; so to make it interesting it has to be a joke inside another joke.
The book may have offered better qualities in narration but in a TV series this is very superficial montage driven sequence of episodes. Sure, it looks lovely, but the middle classes are easily taken in with nice costumes, locations, and people eating food with olive oil and garlic. And it must be about time to have another martini.
Unfortunately it's a waste of time. It has moments of emotion which one sees as being close to real but it really fails because it has to move on to the next silly sex, drink, failed novel adventure.
Oh well; real life can be just as disappointing, but at least in this series you can have another double of pure grain alcohol to forget about it.