The first, or perhaps second, thing to say about “The Artist,” a six-part comedy written and directed by Aram Rappaport, is that it streams on Network, a free ad-supported streaming service that Rappaport created to launch his previous series, “The Green Veil.” The first three episodes premiere Thursday; the last three expire at Christmas.
The second, or perhaps first, thing to say about it is that it comes with a wealth of talent, including Mandy Patinkin, Janet McTeer, Danny Huston, Hank Azaria, Patty Lupone, Zachary Quinto, which requires it to be taken seriously, although that might not be the best way to take it.
Set in 1906, populated by ahistorical versions of historical figures, the series is set primarily in and around the Rhode Island “cottage” of Norman Henry (Patinkin), identified by a title card as “an eccentric robber baron” and apparently what today we would call a venture capitalist. (And one that apparently needs capital.) Norman begins the series dead, carried away rolled in a rug and set on fire like a Viking, before going back in time and meeting his wife, Marian (McTeer), who narrates from her diary and warns the “reader” that only on the last page “might you be equipped enough to distinguish fact from fiction, hero from villain.” I've only seen the first three episodes, so I have no idea, other than where the story misrepresents its real-life characters. But that's just poetic license and, of course, perfectly acceptable.
The staff, for no apparent reason, other than perhaps that the house lacks “a functional kitchen,” live in tents in the front garden. They are called inside by bells, attached to wires coming from the windows, labeled the Maid, the Dancer, the Boxer, the Doctor. The dancer Lilith (Ana Mulvoy Ten) is something of Henry's protégé; she thinks he will arrange for her to dance “Coppelia” at his house in Paris, the fool. (Their scenes together are creepy.) Sometimes we see her naked (although tastefully arranged) in a metal tub. Her dance instructor, Marius (David Pittu), is biting, bitter and insulting. The boxer is Marian's training partner, who exercises his aggression in the ring. She has told us that she hates her husband, and he hates her (although she professes her love indirectly).
Danny Huston plays Edgar Degas, the artist of the series' title.
(The Network)
And then there is the eponymous artist (Huston), eventually identified as Edgar Degas, real-life French Impressionist, who, in fact, was not literally stumbling around Rhode Island in 1906, and certainly not accepting a commission to paint French poodles. (So much French!) You are free to make the connection between the show's dancer and the famous paintings she painted, and her nude in the bathtub with her pastel masterpieces of bathing women. But apart from poor eyesight, a hint of anti-Semitism, and Huston's mutterings in French, there is no substantial resemblance to the genuine article. Here he seems half crazy or half sober. He's pretty worried about getting paid and I don't blame him.
The news of the day is that another character from the story, Thomas Edison (Azaria), comes to the house looking for an investor for his new invention, a Kinetophone, a peep show with sound, like a turn-of-the-century version of a virtual reality headset. (There was such a thing; it was not a success.) This sets up a long flashback in which we learn that Marian and Edison met in college and that he betrayed her. Next up are Evelyn Nesbit (Ever Anderson) and her mother (Jill Hennessy), who booked him out of New York after Evelyn's unstable husband, Harry K. Thaw (Clark Gregg), shot architect Stanford White at White's Madison Square Garden rooftop restaurant. That happened.
It's a loud show, with a lot of screaming and some brief violence, which in its speed borders on slapstick, and some less brief violence that is not at all funny. There is an excess of gratuitous profanity; The F-words and the less common C-word fly like bats in the twilight, clutter sentences, and contain many crude sexual and anatomical imprecations. Almost everyone is repressed, ready to explode. At the beginning of the series, setting the table for what is to come, Marian declares: “This is not a story in the conventional sense”; It is “a cautionary tale,” but “not a murder story. This is a rebirth story,” presumably his own. There is a feminist undercurrent to the narrative: the men are condescending and possessive, the women (taken advantage of in more ways than one) find ways to accommodate, manipulate or fight them, while clinging to themselves.
You can see why Rappaport might have had trouble taking this series anywhere else, or preferred to avoid the earlier notes. Aesthetically and textually, it's the kind of absurdist comedy that used to appear in the late '60s and early '70s, something like the works of Robert Downey Sr. or William Klein, or perhaps an ambitious film student's senior thesis, given a big budget and access to talent; In its very lack, or perhaps avoidance, of subtlety, it seems very old-fashioned. I wouldn't go so far as to call it bad, or even good, but it seems to me to be the perfect realization of the creator's idea, and there's something to that. And there are those three final episodes, which will bring Lupone and Quinto, whose characters are still unknown, and who may move the needle in one direction or another. In any case, it is not something you see every day.
