Avenue 5

2020s tv sitcom

Ryan Clark, hero of Avenue 3, faces unexpected disaster aboard Avenue 5, a different luxury passenger spaceship.

While on their way back to Earth Avenue 5, a luxury passenger spaceship, is suddenly stricken by disaster. At first everything seemed fine, captain Ryan Clark, who previously saved another cruise ship of that fleet, Avenue 3, is in charge of everything. Except he really isn’t. The real man in charge, known as Joe the Engineer, is accidentally killed, which leaves the fate of the ship in hands of Clark, who is in fact... an actor. Actually the whole crew that passengers met during their journey are actors, but staff tries to keep that fact to themselves.

Avenue 5 has drifted away from original course and now they face about 3-years-long journey back to Earth, which starts panic among passengers. Owner of the fleet, billionaire Herman Judd, is aboard and tries to help to the extent of his abilities, which are quite limited. To make things worse the real crew, hidden deep, deep inside the bowels of the ship, accidentally puts forward unsubstantiated gossip that in fact the journey time could be cut down to just 6 months, which triggers an unexpected chain of events.

Armando Iannucci, creator of Avenue 5, made his name as author of quite successful political satire shows, The Thick of It and Veep. Here he moved into completely new area for him, scifi-themed sitcom set is space. Or so it would seem. Together with Will Smith (no, not the actor, a British comedian) they co-wrote both Veep and The Thick of It, now they reunited for another show, but unfortunately they forgot it is a new show. From first episode Avenue 5 is a mixture of satire, parody and typical sitcom elements, but none of them actually work that well. To make things worse most of the time we see crew of Avenue 5 trying to keep passengers in the darkness about how serious their situation actually is.

It is not completely unlike what we have already seen in Veep or The Thick of It, where not fully competent people are put in charge and spend most of their time trying to cover up their incompetence. While in both previous shows it was with political underlining, here we have more of a marketing BS to keep passengers under control. At least at first, because with each episode Avenue 5 moved away from this concept and more into a not really successful farce and detached from reality ideas that are conceived only to justify some cheap joke or slightly funny scene, f.e. it makes sense when they try to reduce use of oxygen by getting rid of some passengers, but jettison of some weight from spaceship that probably weighs millions of tons is slightly ridiculous to say the least.

Unfortunately Avenue 5, while refreshing in setting, is just rewritten episode of Veep or The Thick of It with shallow and unlikable characters, ridiculous plots that loses any sort of integrity with each episode. The cast was interesting, the characters on the other hand were as bland as they get. Apart from those, who are just plainly annoying. For example John Finnemore, author of several very successful radio shows (Cabin Pressure, John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme, That Mitchell and Webb Sound) who would be great choice for the writing team, in Avenue 5 was given a tiny little role as shuttle pilot. On the other hand, Hugh Laurie, great comedy actor, was given part suitable for him, but with constant schizophrenia - he is a clueless actor pretending to be captain, he takes over as captain, but then he remembers he isn’t one, then he shows charisma, then he is leader of the real crew, then he is clueless idiot again, and so on.

Overall a wasted opportunity to do something original and interesting. Good premise, bland characters, unfunny scripts and overall lack of clear destination for the show - sometimes it is sitcom, sometimes it is a political or corporation satire, sometimes it is philosophical comedy drama about modern society, but overall a messy and incoherent project.

Rating	4.4
Funny	5 / 10
Entertaining	2 / 5
Characters	2 / 5
Nonrepetitive	2 / 5