As Chris O’Dowd admits, he has played a lot of “overgrown man-children”.
It’s been 14 years since he first came onto TV screens in The IT Crowd, as the neurotic, emotionally stilted slacker Rob. He can do romantic leads — and has a loyal following based on the sweet policeman he played in Bridesmaids — but now he is gravitating back to the hapless office worker role.
In Get Shorty, he plays Miles Daly, who has just taken a job as an assistant at Hollywood’s Budd E. Boy productions, which is a bit like an LA version of the BBC as seen in W1A. It’s not a natural career progression; he used to be a high-level gangster, dicing with life and death in a murderous crime ring. Now his biggest challenge is complicated drinks orders — iced mint tea but in a real mug because the paper ones get squishy and this episode’s title, Dark Roast, Oat Milk, Two Splendas.
Can he really be so set on a career in film that he’s willing to start from the bottom? Or should we never underestimate the role of the assistant?
So far, rather different to the Get Shorty you may be expecting. This series is only loosely based on the 1990 Elmore Leonard novel, adapted into a film five years later. That starred John Travolta as Chili Palmer, a capable gangster who dreamed of working in the movies. Like the recent TV series of Fargo, this iteration of Get Shorty takes the spirit of the original and takes it in a fresh direction.
The first two series were a success — thanks to the charisma of O’Dowd and comedian Ray Romano who plays the shambolic film producer Rick Moreweather. The script is tight too, packed with deadpan one-liners and attitude.
Television shows in 2020
In the third series Miles is grafting as his former colleagues plot around him. His new job allows a skewering of Hollywood and the people within it, with the background of his equally ridiculous (and violent) old one. Rick looks permanently distressed and Miles is very much bumbling his way through the chaos. I felt a bit like that too, trying to follow the meandering subplots. There’s no respite at home — his teenage daughter, the only person who he is desperate to please, is showing off about his time in prison at school and his ex-wife is not best pleased.
But Miles takes it in his stride, using his Irish charm to great effect and making light of gnarly situations. He has one ally, a woman called April (Megan Stevenson), but she’s starting to get irked with him too.
This is a Seventies-style heist caper- meets-Hollywood production pastiche — there’s violence and darkness but the people behaving badly and getting into scrapes are funny, with a winning turn of phrase. The music adds to the jaunty mood, with Connie Converse’s Fifties New York song Talkin’ Like You (Two Tall Mountains) played at the start.
Like O’Dowd’s character, Get Shorty is a mess but it has enough charm to get away with it.
Get Shorty is on Sky Atlantic, tonight at 9pm
