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Over the last few days I've been binge-watching the British TV series Uncle, which I wanted to watch because Con O'Neill (who plays Izzy in Our Flag Means Death) has a supporting role in it.
It's about a 30-something struggling/failed musician and profoundly immature man-baby who reluctantly finds himself helping his divorced sister look after her adolescent son. (In very basic ways, like taking the kid to football practice--he's not stuck raising the kid, which is a plot that I am allergic to.)
I can report that I almost always liked it a lot, and loved it occasionally. The storytelling is solid, occasionally really inventive, and mostly doesn't go for either unearned pathos or unearned redemption.
Whether you'll like it depends a bit on whether you can stand detesting the protagonist, Andy, about 90% of the time. It's true that most of the time the show doesn't want us to like him. But I'm not sure I was supposed to dislike him quite as much as I did. What saved the show for me was literally every other character. They're all interesting, rounded, and really well-acted, beginning with a consistently excellent performance by Elliot Speller-Gillot as Errol, the nephew, a brilliant, deeply nerdy and weird boy who's probably somewhere on the autism spectrum. (But, to be clear, the character rises far above the stereotype of the autistic genius.)
And Con O'Neill is an absolute delight who steals every scene he's in. (My biggest complaint about the show is that there should have been much more of his character, Val.)
It's three seasons, 20 half-hour episodes total, so not a huge time commitment. I'll note that the storytelling becomes more inventive and less strictly sitcom-y after S1.
( And under the cut, some spoilery stuff )
It's about a 30-something struggling/failed musician and profoundly immature man-baby who reluctantly finds himself helping his divorced sister look after her adolescent son. (In very basic ways, like taking the kid to football practice--he's not stuck raising the kid, which is a plot that I am allergic to.)
I can report that I almost always liked it a lot, and loved it occasionally. The storytelling is solid, occasionally really inventive, and mostly doesn't go for either unearned pathos or unearned redemption.
Whether you'll like it depends a bit on whether you can stand detesting the protagonist, Andy, about 90% of the time. It's true that most of the time the show doesn't want us to like him. But I'm not sure I was supposed to dislike him quite as much as I did. What saved the show for me was literally every other character. They're all interesting, rounded, and really well-acted, beginning with a consistently excellent performance by Elliot Speller-Gillot as Errol, the nephew, a brilliant, deeply nerdy and weird boy who's probably somewhere on the autism spectrum. (But, to be clear, the character rises far above the stereotype of the autistic genius.)
And Con O'Neill is an absolute delight who steals every scene he's in. (My biggest complaint about the show is that there should have been much more of his character, Val.)
It's three seasons, 20 half-hour episodes total, so not a huge time commitment. I'll note that the storytelling becomes more inventive and less strictly sitcom-y after S1.
( And under the cut, some spoilery stuff )
