Avenue 5’s forced humor finds Hugh Laurie miscast as Ryan Clark letting down audiences and ‘House’ actor
It isn't like Hugh Laurie has never been in an ensemble comedy. His work in 'Blackadder' will have audiences coming back for more every time. But Armando Iannucci's 'Avenue 5' is not the best fit for Laurie who made a career in the U.K. playing the lovable fool who acts as the foil to characters who are smarter than him (usually Stephen Fry).
In 'Avenue 5', however, with the gravitas that age has given him, he looks quite different from when he was at 20, prancing about the screen in period costumes. So even though he is clueless, Laurie's Ryan Clark, the ship's ornamental captain, is too "propah", to be any fun. There is more than a little of the Jeremy Irons hangover to his appearance, which doesn't allow Laurie to wallow in the absurd.
Sure he has been given many zingy one-liners, but they mostly fall flat because they seem forced. Even his beloved, tried-and-tested comedy schticks -- like the flabbergasted expression with a hint of panic, the too-fast dialogue delivery, the high pitched voice and the exaggerated roll of the eyes -- fall flat because of this miscasting.
Laurie has never done forced humor before and the aggressive, sometimes slapstick and sometimes morbid humor of the show, uses his talents badly. He would probably have been a better fit in Josh Gad's character of the billionaire Herman Judd. Losing Gad altogether wouldn't be a bad deal either since he comes across as annoying rather than funny.
The only one who is a perfect fit is passenger-support officer Matt (Zach Woods). Again, though Woods does a great job, even his role would have been a better fit for Hugh Laurie's comedic persona.
It has been a long time since we saw Hugh Laurie in a comedy role and this was supposed to be the perfect vehicle to introduce American audiences to his funnyman side. But the casting choices and overwrought writing have let him (and audiences) down. At the heart of it, even though this is a story about a cruise ship in space that mines hospitality humor, it has an unreal feel to it.
The actors act like they are in a well-staged play with too obvious beats that adds to this feeling of unreality. This directly impacts the humor dished out in the first episode. Let's hope it gets better from here. But at least, we get to hear Laurie's British accent again.
'Avenue 5' airs on HBO Sundays at 10 p.m. ET.
