This review is based on the first six episodes of the first season. I like this series so much that it's hard to see it objectively. I like it so much that I'm not bingeing but rather rationing myself to a meagre 25 or so minutes each day. So, what makes it quite so enjoyable? Firstly, it's genuinely good - a perfect cast delivering tonally perfect performances with a script that delivers reality plus a few extra percentage points. Occasionally, it's laugh out loud funny but mostly it's genuinely affecting. This is no guilty pleasure in which you know you're being manipulated but you're going along for the (very fun) ride. This always feels real, grounded. There are a few stereotypes amongst the smaller roles but the big ones, the roles that anchor this series, are well written and perfectly cast. Lola Kirke is a wonderful lightning rod, if gaining weight by the episode; Saffron Burrows is fine, if somewhat less interesting than in her pre plastic surgery roles; Bernadette Peters is terrific; Malcolm McDowell is the perfect exiting Maestro. And then there's Gael Garcia Bernal. As an outsider, I have no idea how much of his character was on the page and how much was his own invention but the results are spectacular. He makes this series. His portrayal of Rodrigo, the infant terrible of the conducting world, is nothing short of brilliant and creates, most appropriately, the bright star around which everything revolves. Mozart in the Jungle is not highbrow entertainment. It doesn't challenge or confront. It works its magic more subtly, and sometimes more effectively. It's a feel good show in the best possible way. Real, not fake. It likes its characters, for all their flaws. You could do worse.
ADDENDUM I've now watched the final four episodes, during which I mentally knocked off a point (episode 8) and put it back on for episode 10. Episode 8 is by far the weakest. It's not that it's bad, it's just that its sensibilities suddenly resembled humdrum American TV and thus became deeply unnerving. It's as though the writers had forgotten, or worse had never understood what made this series so wonderful. Episode 8 was an attempt to broaden the humor at the expense of the humanity. As though someone had pointed out that this was meant to be a comedy. For the record, episode 7 had been a delight and 9, if not special in its own right, at least an improvement on 8. And then there were, or rather was, 10. The finale. The performance towards which everything had led. It's a masterpiece. The perfect summation of and climax to everything that's come before. It's heartstoppingly brave, rolling the emotional dice again and again. It left me breathless, quite literally. Compromises? Not really but we must prepare for a second series and so are denied absolute closure. That final episode was so close to perfection that I hesitate to anticipate a second series. But of course I will. I do. With trepidation.
