With only four installments of its 10-episode run having dropped on Apple TV, The Studio has established itself as the most consistently laugh-out-loud show currently on television, whether broadcast, cable, or streaming. The series covers the unexpected ascent and shaky reign of an ambitious, over-zealous mid-level executive who fails upward into the top spot at a major movie studio. It was created by the writing and directing duo of Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg and stars Rogan as Matt Remick — newly minted head of Continental Studios and his own worst enemy. The Studio is also the latest example of what is often referred to as the comedy of discomfort.
Maybe it’s because their national character is traditionally thought to embrace propriety, dignity, and stoicism, but the British are experts at the comedy of discomfort, which presents the human condition at its most cringe-inducing in the name of humor. It’s one thing to have a pompous antagonist with malicious intent brought down amusingly. That can be gratifying. It’s quite another thing when the butt of the joke is a hapless, even borderline unlikable protagonist or two. That would be the case in a couple of the sharpest, funniest situation comedies to hit our shores from overseas: the original U.K. version of The Office with its egomaniacal boss played by Ricky Gervais and the innovative first-person style series Peep Show with Cambridge Footlights alumni David Mitchell and Robert Webb as a pair of mismatched, constantly bickering roommates in London.
The British are experts at the comedy of discomfort, which presents the human condition at its most cringe-inducing in the name of humor.
The U.S. has contributed to the cringe with stateside programs featuring a bunch of characters incapable of getting out of their own way: the American remake of The Office; the SoCal-set thwarted-romance sitcom You’re the Worst; the Washington, D.C. lampoon Veep; and Curb Your Enthusiasm, which has been making audiences chortle at the willfully petty behavior of comedian-writer Larry David (as an over-the-top version of himself) since the late 1990s. If there are strands of Curb DNA in The Studio with its insider take on show-business mechanics and Los Angeles life enhanced by a line-up of celebrated actors and directors willing to poke fun at their public images, there are hints of the 1992 cameo-laden film-industry satire The Player, too.
The squirm factor
As the team behind the controversial North Korea-baiting farce The Interview and less volatile, more successful projects such as the apocalyptic romp This Is the End, Rogan and Goldberg have been through the Hollywood wringer and are familiar with what they ridicule. For Rogan, it’s a knowledge born of working on both sides of the camera. His comedic leading-man status in hits including Knocked Up, Pineapple Express, and Neighbors and bombs like his pulp-hero misfire The Green Hornet appears to have primed him for The Studio, which is propelled forward by his earnest, anxious, self-sabotaging Matt Remick. The squirm factor is considerable in every episode as Matt — clearly a fan of the medium and its esteemed directors and actors — is unprepared for the responsibilities of his new, high-powered job and inadvertently flubs one situation after another.
This is Rogan’s meatiest role yet, and the ensemble alongside him matches him volley after volley on the comedy frontlines. Ike Barinholtz serves as an ideal foil as Matt’s opportunistic right-hand man and best friend Sal Saperstein; Kathryn Hahn brings her sly, mercurial side to Continental’s obsequious marketing executive Maya Mason; Bryan Cranston pops in as Griffin Mill, Continental’s bottom-line obsessed CEO; and fresh from her triumph as the scatterbrained matriarch on the Emmy-winning series Schitt’s Creek, Catherine O’Hara is a bundle of manipulation and resentment as the previous studio head (and Matt’s mentor) Patty Leigh. Every episode is further supercharged by a selection of guest stars — some in significant parts (Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Anthony Mackie, Zac Efron, Olivia Wilde), some in cameos (Charlize Theron, Paul Dano), all of them delivering their lines with wit and aplomb. Legendary filmmaker Scorsese is particularly good in the premiere, “The Promotion,” agreeing to extreme product placement to get his dream docudrama made.
Tracking shots and screwing up
Production-wise, Rogan and Goldberg have taken chances and made bold choices that pay off. For example, “The Oner” follows Matt and Sal to a house in the hills where director Sarah Polley is trying to get her tightly budgeted movie’s climactic scene completed. It’s a “oner,” an elaborate tracking shot to be done during the “golden hour” when the sun is about to go down. Although she would prefer that Matt not be present, Polley accedes to him being there, so she can wheedle an expensive soundtrack addition out of him. And of course, he becomes a massive distraction and undermines the intricate scene over and over as time slips away. On its own terms, it’s a hilarious mix of studio politics in action and on-location slapstick, made even more impressive by the entire episode itself being done as a single tracking shot.
You don’t need to be hyperaware of the way things work in Hollywood or be conversant in the history of cinema to get a kick out of The Studio, although it might increase the joy of watching Matt and Sal play detective — with callbacks to The Maltese Falcon and Chinatown — as they chase down a missing film reel at one point in the series. But you do need to be O.K. with seeing Matt’s regular mishaps and humiliation, which are integral elements of this genuinely uproarious comedy of discomfort.
The Studio is available for streaming on Apple TV+ with new episodes released on Wednesdays.
