Call My Agent! (2015–2020)
9/10
Feminist, funny, feminine, fraught, flat finale oh, and stunt casting
5 February 2021
Strong characters, good jokes, plenty of drama, glamour and de l'amour. Starts to grind its gears in season 4. First three seasons get a nine. Keeps the ninth star for Jean-Gabin the dog.

Did you watch the later Mad Men seasons? A lot of frantic office and bed-hopping, people setting up rival agencies, crisis after crisis thrown at mainly well-defined characters. Dix Pour Cent (CMA) is sort of Mad Men: The Next Generation with much better jokes, less death, and well normalised LGBTness, (though race less addressed). The matriarch Arlette might well have been one of Don or Roger's party girls back in the day.

Call My Agent (set in the present!) has a much more romantic French side, complete with baroque soundtrack, great views of Paris inside and out, and let's not forget the stunt casting of every French film star you didn't know was still working, playing themselves. A clever device, only possible in a drama about high-end movie agents. Times have changed - in Sunset Boulevard Norma Desmond was washed up at 44(!)

I'm on S04E03 and enjoying it more for the humour and 'where will they take this-ness' than any suspense I feel for the characters. The inter-agency rivalry gets pretty one-dimensional, and relationship break-ups over and over can seem pretty forced. Glam-soap by the finale, I expect, but that's Netflix.

I can see why they introduced Hicham as the psychopath venture capitalist -there wasn't quite enough darkness in series 1. But then they went and gave him a heart, too. I don't know if it's the awful man bun, his slim physique or his acting; I just don't believe the character.

An image search for Fanny Herrero will reveal that the casting of Camille Cottin as the pivotal Andrea character is very likely self-referential.
28 out of 32 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Recently Viewed