Would You Like Franchise With That?

I get it -- there are too many interesting television series out there for you consider watching one that was just ignominiously cancelled after a barely-watched first season. But if you're a regular reader of my blog, there's a good chance this show is "relevant to your interests," as they say.

So let me say a few words about The Franchise. This half-hour comedy followed the behind-the-scenes insanity of the making of Tecto, one film in a massive superhero movie universe. A frazzled first assistant director struggles to please a vain leading actor, an aging theater star who thinks he's too good to be there, an auteur writer-director with outsized ambitions, demanding and distant studio executives who don't want anything to mess with the franchise's "tentpoles," and much, much more.

The show was created by Jon Brown, who was a writer on both Avenue 5 and Veep, and so was supported here by the creator of those shows, Armando Iannucci. Not every project associated with Iannucci has wowed me, but I generally like his formula of vapid people with massive flaws taking on serious tasks. It may be debatable how serious a task it is to make a popcorn superhero movie, but in at least every other sense, The Franchise is very much the spiritual successor to Avenue 5 and Veep.

Episodes highlight the surreal stupidity that can be part of movie-making: working with visual effects, causing real-world destruction for the sake of a fleeting shot, altering dialogue to please fragile celebrities or foreign nations, and more. The show might be a bit "inside," and thus may be less interesting if you aren't interested in movie making. Then again, you didn't have to be a fan of government to like Veep. I think The Franchise generates plenty of laughs regardless.

There are a few cheeky bits of casting for people familiar with actual superhero franchises. Daniel Brühl, who gave the MCU one of its most memed moments as Zemo, plays the director of Tecto. Aya Cash, who gave a memorable turn as Stormfront on The Boys, plays an ambitious new producer assigned to the film. But other casting is fun because you feel like Marvel or DC has cast these people and you just might not remember it: Billy Magnussen and Richard E. Grant. Himesh Patel is solid as the keystone of the show, first AD Daniel Kumar. Then there's the real scene-stealer, Lolly Adefope, who plays a new low-level assistant on the film and hilariously neither takes shit nor gives a shit.

As you might guess from the show's already-canceled status, after a single season nobody was talking about, the show is no Veep. That was a next-level success possible when every writer, every actor, every person working on the show was at the top of their game, with a razor sharp wit and a barely-disguised contempt for the thing being satirized. Everyone is having fun with The Franchise, and there are no real weak links... but it all amounts more to a less lofty "isn't this silly?"

Still -- if you liked Veep, or if you've been sucked into the inescapable gravity of a superhero franchise, then The Franchise might be for you. Let's face it, almost every consumer of media is one of those things, and most readers of this blog are probably both. I give The Franchise a B.