Visit the (fictional) set of the big-budget superhero fantasy Tecto: Eye of the Storm and you’ll immediately suspect things aren’t well in the Maximum (think Marvel) Cinematic Universe. In the elaborate three-minute tracking shot with which director Sam Mendes opens HBO’s gleefully satirical The Franchise, we encounter a costumed “fish person” extra on the verge of a panic attack, a British soundstage that the pretentious director is keeping too dark for the studio’s taste, and a clueless star who’s later coached to swagger “like a panther on his way to a job interview.” Huh?
Trying to keep the multimillion-dollar production from going off the rails is Daniel (Himesh Patel), the first assistant director: “I’m Everything Man, the world’s most thankless superhero,” he wearily explains. While putting out multiple fires and stroking multiple egos, Daniel is showing the ropes to newly arrived third assistant director Dag (a droll Lolly Adefope), whose wide-eyed and cheerful snark is a constant delight. Example: When the movie is forced to shoehorn a Chinese tractor into their deep-space scenario as product placement, Dag mutters, “Imagine if something in the movie didn’t make sense.”
Making sense is the least of Tecto’s problems, as smartly crafted by series creator Jon Brown (Veep, Succession), with Veep’s Armando Iannucci as an executive producer. Like Veep, this unsparing and often hilariously vicious spoof minces no vulgarities and spares no one in its skewering of a high-stakes workplace. The obscene waste, the convoluted and vacuous comic-book storytelling, the bald ambition and raging insecurity of players on and behind the camera are all fair game.
The cast is spot-on, with Patel doing a fair approximation of a Newhart-like voice of reason, playing middleman and fixer between the fickle studio with its unseen patriarch and the eccentric director, Eric (an amusingly brooding and mercurial Daniel Brühl), whose so-called artistic vision is often at odds with Maximum’s commercial desires. Aya Cash (You’re the Worst, The Boys) is typically terrific as Anita, a producer who worries that their movie, a mere cog in a groaning galaxy of interconnected would-be blockbusters, is being treated as “a refugee camp for displaced I.P. (intellectual property).” Anita and Daniel have history and emotional baggage, but The Franchise is usually too busy juggling calamities to dwell too deeply on the personal.
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The show-within-a-show’s actors are likewise a fretful and needy bunch, led by Billy Magnussen, foolishly endearing as Adam aka “Tecto,” an insecure hunk whose inferiority complex is stoked and provoked by the more experienced and vainglorious Peter (a savory Richard E. Grant), playing the villain onscreen and who’s just as dastardly between scenes, dripping with sarcasm and contempt.
The series’ structure of cascading dilemmas can become repetitive over eight weeks, but The Franchise is at its best when it zeroes in on pointed issues like a gender imbalance in the superhero genre or the studio insisting on a meaningless crossover cameo for fan service. One of the strongest episodes takes the crew to Armenia for an ill-fated location shoot, where the goal is to destroy a bridge without disturbing a local protected species of the Armenian whiskered bat. All while director Eric spirals over Martin Scorsese’s public bashing of superhero movies. “Marty thinks we’ve killed cinema,” he laments.
Before Tecto wraps, spirits will be broken, with meltdowns par for the course as the show grinds on. All in the name of art? Don’t make me laugh.
“We just keep the trains running,” Daniel sighs. “Who cares what’s on them?”
The Franchise, Series Premiere, Sunday, October 6, 10/9c, HBO
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