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A professor sexually hungering for a younger colleague is the starting point for the terrific Vladimir. Plus, Sherlock gets the Guy Ritchie treatment (again), another Yellowstone spin-off gallops ahead, while Person of Interest is a great case-of-the-week thriller.
Vladimir ★★★★½ (Netflix)
Throughout this deliciously unchecked comic-drama, Rachel Weisz’s unnamed protagonist – let’s call her the Professor, for her position in the English department at a storied American university – breaks away from a screen to address the watching audience. The Professor is erudite, charming and confident, even as she worries that ageing into her 50s has dispelled her attractiveness; even as she sexually hungers for a younger colleague, Vladimir (Leo Woodall). It’s as if she’s the viewer’s best friend. Or perhaps we’re her jury.
Rachel Weisz as the unnamed protagonist in Vladimir.
Adapted by author Julia May Jonas from her 2022 novel of the same name, Vladimir is rife with this kind of juicy, uncomfortable choice. With a bravura performance by Weisz that keeps reframing your understanding of her character, the show offers up thought-provoking playfulness and pulse-raising carnality. It’s about many things, including the perverse spark that sets off creativity, generational conflict and the drollest of observations. One relevant issue: the Professor’s husband and fellow academic, John (John Slattery), is being investigated for his past affairs with students.
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She, of course, knew about them. They had a mutual “arrangement”. One of the joys of this series is that these adults are smart and capable of infernal missteps – sensitive and willing to be selfish. They’re supposedly rounded people, starting to wonder if they have a price to pay; Gen X rebels who now need the protection of the system. The narrative is down in the muck of their collective pathologies, but it’s too fleet and fearless to stand still and deliver a definitive judgment.
You might disagree with the social mores of the Professor and John, or Vladimir and his wife, hopeful academic Cynthia (Jessica Henwick), but it’s impossible to write them off.
The eight half-hour episodes – so enjoyably concise – have a heightened pitch. Every time the Professor encounters Vladimir, snatches of her fantasies overwhelm reality. The feeling is so strong, she reasons, that she must act. The Professor, writing anew with horny propulsion, invokes “the spiritual imperative of desire” but the show makes even literary theory funny.
Rachel Weisz as the protagonist and Leo Woodall as Vladimir.
Slattery is a terrific foil for Weisz – John has a supermarket checkout scene involving Tess of the d’Urbervilles that is an all-timer – but Woodall also excels as the still baby-faced Vladimir, who is either completely unaware of the Professor’s intentions or secretly stoking them. There are interpretations, often contradictory and always watchable, for nearly every facet of this show, including the academic satire. It whisks you along, threatening calamity even as the Professor seeks nirvana. Binge Vladimir, then find someone to debate it with. This outstanding show deserves nothing less.
Dónal Finn, Zine Tseng, Hero Fiennes Tiffin in Young Sherlock.Young Sherlock ★★★ (Amazon Prime Video)
Guy Ritchie, who previously directed 2009’s Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jnr, is in young adult mode for this 19th century origin series about the master detective: fisticuffs, impish charm, the first flush of attraction and a disregard for authority all feature. This Sherlock Holmes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) is young, smart and irresponsible – he swiftly goes from jail, where he’s extracted by respectable older brother Mycroft (Max Irons), to Oxford University, where his nascent powers of deduction are soon tested.
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The setting is 1871, but historical accuracy doesn’t get in the way of thrills in this adaptation of Andrew Lane’s Young Sherlock Holmes novels (which were authorised by Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate). Chinese imperial princess Gulun Shou’an (Zine Tseng) is first sighted introducing martial arts to a group of bandits who look like they escaped from a Western, while the supporting roles are broad. Colin Firth, with much facial hair, plays a tycoon named Sir Bucephalus Hodge.
But Ritchie’s collaborator, creator Matthew Parkhill (Deep State), laces the punk needle drops and twisty editing with some emotional ballast. Sherlock is haunted by a childhood event that tore apart his family – Natascha McElhone’s “Mummy” is not in a good place – and there’s a tantalising portent in the amateur detective’s Oxford ally being Irish scholarship student and future nemesis James Moriarty (Donal Finn). The show has some potential.
Jim Caviezel (left) and Michael Emerson in Person of Interest. Person of Interest ★★★½ (Netflix)
When this American crime drama debuted in 2011, it presented as a case-of-the-week thriller with a twist: a tech billionaire (Lost MVP Michael Emerson) and a former CIA agent (Jim Caviezel) save ordinary people an AI system has marked as being at risk. But with Jonathan Nolan (Westworld) as creator, the show swiftly leant into science-fiction themes as various groups fought for control of the machine and it became sentient. There are five seasons, complete with finale, that are satisfying as a nightly procedural and eerily prescient.
Kate McKinnon (left) and Yeji Kim in In the Blink of an Eye.In the Blink of an Eye ★★ (Disney+)
Filmmaker Andrew Stanton has two career paths. In animation, he has directed Pixar hits such as Finding Nemo and WALL-E, but his live action ambitions hit a wall with the 2012 Mars misfire John Carter. He returns to the latter strand with this science-fiction drama, which follows three interconnected ages of humanity: a struggling Palaeolithic family, a current-day researcher (Rashida Jones) and a lone future interplanetary astronaut (Kate McKinnon). Stanton’s long-delayed film is looking to capture the fragile wonder of life, but it can be po-faced, lacking detail and occasionally daft.
Marshals (from left): Tatanka Means, Ash Santos, Logan Marshall-Green, Arielle Kebbel and Luke Grimes. Marshals ★★½ (Paramount+)
We’ve already had the Yellowstone prequels, but with the manly Montana monologues of Taylor Sheridan’s influential show finally concluded, it’s time for the spin-offs. The first follows the grieving Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes), a less-prominent member of the Yellowstone supporting cast, who puts his military training to use by joining a squad of militarised US marshals protecting Montana from bikers, fentanyl dealers and other undesirables. Kayce is healing by hurting bad guys. The prolific Sheridan didn’t work on the show, which might explain why it’s a compact, somewhat predictable, network procedural.
Tim Heidecker (left) and Eric Wareheim in Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! ★★ (HBO Max)
Meant to play as the nightmare offspring of infomercial networks, corporate malfeasance and absurdist humour, this 2007 sketch comedy series from Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim was hugely divisive upon release as it tested the boundaries of conceptual comedy even while drawing a slew of famous guests. HBO Max has added all five seasons, and now that the think-pieces have dried up, you can appreciate – or be baffled by – what is a viscerally weird experience. Fans of Netflix’s I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson should definitely check in.
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