Weekend Watch: The Fall Of The House Of Usher, Lessons In Chemistry
Scares for spoiled siblings and a scientist cooking up a storm
Image Credit: Netflix
Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, in which I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Mike Flanagan unveils his latest horror series and Brie Larson’s boiling up dissent. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite and Threads/Instagram: @jammerwhite
A quick note before I start –– the column is taking a one-week break next week as I’ll be travelling. I’ll be back for the week of Friday, 27 October!
Mike Flanagan has become a reliable purveyor of horror on big screens and small, particularly through the shows he has created for Netflix, including The Haunting Of Hill House and Midnight Mass. He’s now jumped ship for a big deal at Amazon, but not before delivering his latest slab of terror, The Fall Of The House Of Usher.
And it’s one of the best series he’s ever made.
Usher, as the title suggests, is drawn from the work of Edgar Allan Poe, but rather than a straight adaptation of that story, Flanagan and his writing team have cannily whipped several Poe tales together, including The Tell-Tale Heart, The Masque Of The Red Death and The Pit And The Pendulum. Everything is given a contemporary spin, bursting with style and smarts.
This new show is anchored by ruthless siblings Roderick (Bruce Greenwood) and Madeline (Mary McDonnell) Usher, who have built Fortunato Pharmaceuticals into an empire of wealth, privilege and power. But past secrets come to light when the heirs to the Usher dynasty start dying at the hands of a mysterious woman from their youth.
Taking the Sackler family as inspiration, Usher explores the vagaries of the ultra-wealthy through the lens of Poe’s morality plays, crafting compelling characters for the various Usher kids (and their spouses/children/significant others/hangers-on) and then putting them through the wringer as the terrible price for their father/aunt’s decisions back in the day come back to haunt them all.
Greenwood is particularly great as Roderick, telling his story to Carl Lumbly’s C. Auguste Dupin, a former friend turned legal nemesis (he became a district attorney on a crusade to unveil the Ushers’ wrongdoings). It’s even more impressive when you learn that Greenwood was parachuted in as a mid-production replacement for Frank Langella, who had been cast as the patriarch, but was fired following alleged improper behaviour.
But there are no real weak links in this cast, from the Flanagan regulars such as Henry Thomas, Zach Gilford, Samantha Sloyan and Kate Siegel, who are typically fantastic in their roles, to new recruits, including Mark Hamill –– and they fit in perfectly.
Unlike Flanagan’s last series, The Midnight Club, (which I enjoyed but didn’t love), Usher is able to give each episode (and character) its own story, while still weaving everything into a compelling whole.
If you’re used to the moodier likes of Midnight Mass, this new series marks a wilder, campier diversion from that, but it’s also a carefully crafted and superbly dialled-in balance.
The Fall Of The House Of Usher, to use a rare sports metaphor, represents a top-tier football player scoring a hat-trick just as another club poaches them.
The Fall Of The House Of Usher is on Netflix now. I’ve seen all eight episodes.
Image Credit: Apple TV+
Brie Larson has popped up on TV in a few guest roles in the last few years, but to find her most recent starring gig, you’d have to go back to 2009’s United States Of Tara.
Apple TV+, however, has lured her back to small screens with Lessons In Chemistry. Adapting the best-selling novel by author, science editor and copywriter Bonnie Garmus, the show is set in the early 1950s. Lessons follows Elizabeth Zott (Larson), whose dream of being a scientist is put on hold in a patriarchal society. When Elizabeth finds herself fired from her lab, she accepts a job as a host on a TV cooking show and sets out to teach a nation of overlooked housewives — and the men who are suddenly listening — a lot more than recipes.
Though there are the odd moments where it feels like Larson’s character is a mouthpiece for ideas that few in 1950s America would be thinking, let alone voicing, that doesn’t stop Lessons In Chemistry being an entertaining examination of (and push back against) the prevailing attitude towards the genders.
Zott has a sharp mind and a sharp wit to match, which somewhat naturally doesn’t help her fit in; she’s also carrying a considerable trauma that was swept under the rug.
Larson navigates the main role with typical intensity, while also giving Elizabeth some real humanity. And there are superb supporting performances from Kevin Sussman, Aja Naomi King and Lewis Pullman to name just three. But this is so well done that you could point to anyone in the cast and find a solid turn.
The first two episodes of Lessons In Chemistry are on Apple TV+ now. A new episode will debut weekly through 24 November. I’ve seen the whole season.