{"id":29481,"date":"2025-09-18T19:50:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T19:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/29481\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T19:50:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T19:50:06","slug":"a-grungy-us-drama-about-a-dingy-upmarket-city-restaurant-come-again-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/29481\/","title":{"rendered":"A grungy US drama about a dingy upmarket city restaurant? Come again? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Look at what Netflix<\/a> has pulled out of the hat \u2013 a grungy drama in which a dingy upmarket restaurant serves as a backdrop for unravelling relationships, addiction issues and sundry other big city woes. <\/p>\n

If that makes Black Rabbit sound like a shameless steal from Disney\u2019s<\/a> The Bear<\/a> \u2026 well, that is indeed the dish placed before us. <\/p>\n

Not that there aren\u2019t some spicy additional ingredients in the form of A-listers Jude Law<\/a> and Jason Bateman<\/a>, playing odd-couple brothers whose adventures in the hospitality business go disastrously awry. <\/p>\n

Black Rabbit isn\u2019t small-screen fast food. The story takes its time unfolding. Those with an appetite for instant gratification will quickly become bored. Unlike the ultimately upbeat The Bear there is also a lot of misanthropy swilling about in Black Rabbit \u2013 named for the stylish dingy Manhattan hangout established by siblings Jake (Law, with a wobbly American accent) and Vince (Bateman, who directs the first two episodes). <\/p>\n

Unlike The Bear, Black Rabbit stays in the same doomy groove throughout. Though Jake is raffishly charming \u2013 why else would you cast Jude Law? \u2013 he is eventually revealed to be deeply unpleasant. Bateman\u2019s Vince, meanwhile, is a mess – a former heroin addict with a disastrous relationship with his grown-up daughter and a propensity for messing up his life at every opportunity. <\/p>\n

Black Rabbit clearly sees itself as edgy as anything \u2013 touching on issues such as workplace harassment and toxic bosses, and brilliantly conjuring the rhapsodic grime of New York (you can tell it was shot on location). But, much like its middle-aged leads, it all feels a bit long in the tooth. <\/p>\n

Both Jack and Vince are unpleasant throwbacks to the mid-2000s and the heyday of \u201cdifficult man\u201d shows such as Breaking Bad and Mad Men. <\/p>\n

Of course, what felt fresh and challenging during the final years of the George W Bush presidency is now old hat \u2013 despite the best efforts and undoubted charisma of the leads.<\/p>\n

There are moments of unintentional comedy, too. Jake and Vince used to be in an early 2000s New York band, and a clip of the duo performing is hilarious \u2013 their music sounds like a throwback to group such as The Walkmen or The Rapture, but Law is done up like a young Kurt Cobain. <\/p>\n

As with so much else here, it\u2019s a tune we\u2019ve heard before \u2013 and played much more proficiently.<\/p>\n

Black Rabbit is streaming on Netflix now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Look at what Netflix has pulled out of the hat \u2013 a grungy drama in which a dingy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,24019],"class_list":{"0":"post-29481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-jason-bateman"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}