"Political Animals" (2012)

[Miriam]

POLITICAL ANIMALS is a bold and significant look at a fictional former first family in turmoil. Elaine Barrish, a divorced former First Lady and current Secretary of State, struggles to keep her family together while simultaneously dealing with the crises of the State Department. She finds an unlikely ally in Susan Berg, a famous D.C. journalist who has spent her career tearing Elaine down. The provocative drama series will tap into the behind-the-scenes dynamics of a high-profile political dynasty, the dark – yet real – human side of life, and the often-disastrous effects of political ambition. Exploring themes that resonate in the current political landscape and taking viewers beyond the glossy ads and well-written public speeches, POLITICAL ANIMALS will reveal a vulnerable family on the verge of falling apart.

Cast
Sigourney Weaver as Elaine Barrish
Carla Gugino as Susan Berg
Ciarán Hinds as Bud Hammond
James Wolk as Douglas Hammond
Sebastian Stan as T. J. Hammond
Ellen Burstyn as Margaret Barrish
Brittany Ishibashi as Anne Ogami
Adrian Pasdar as Paul Garcetti,
Dylan Baker as Fred Collier

[captain crash]

Ziet er boeiend uit, als het klaar is ga ik het in een keer kijken denk ik. Reviews zijn wat wisselend, maargoed dat heeft mij nog nooti weerhouden om iets te kijken

Dacht even dat dit gebaseerd was op het Britse "Party Animals" maar dat lijkt toch niet zo te zijn (rechten van dat concept zijn twee jaar terug in de VS gekocht dus het was mogelijk geweest).

[Miriam]

Heerlijke soap-drama is het ook

[Guess who?]

Hmm, ik vind het iets teveel soap voor mijn smaak.

[.:Admiral-Janeway:.]

Hmm, ik vind het iets teveel soap voor mijn smaak.

[Mr Hayes]

Ik heb geen vergelijkingsmateriaal. Heb enkel afleveringen van 'The West Wing' uit seizoen 4 gezien. En ook maar sporadisch. 'Political Animals' vind ik super. Ik ben juist ook geïnteresseerd in de mensen die politici zijn. En in de drama's die zich afspelen binnen de muren van het Binnenhof....of Capitol Hill.

Je kunt de serie 'Political Animals' iets teveel soap noemen, maar daar doe je de serie mee tekort. Wat b.v. CDA-er Jack de Vries heeft uitgevroten met vrouwen....daar zit echt wel wat meer verhaal achter. Ik ben daar benieuwd naar. Wat voor nachtelijke gesprekken moeten Hillary en Bill wel niet gehad hebben over de uitspraak "I did not knew that woman". En vooral voor Hillary moeten dat verschrikkelijke tijden zijn geweest. Of de voormalige gouverneur van New Jersey, Jim McGreevey....die het zichzelf zo lastig heeft gemaakt met zijn coming out. Je kunt het soaps noemen, maar het zijn wel op waarheid beruste soaps.

Politici zijn vooral mensen. En die facade mag wel eens weggetrokken worden. 'Political Animals' slaagt daar mijns inziens goed in. Sigourney Weaver zet een fantastische Elaine Barrish Hammond (Lees: Hillary Rodham Clinton) neer.....mét emotie, tranen en enkele zeer sterke scenes. Ik heb niet teveel vergelijkingsmateriaal en moet nog steeds 'The West Wing' helemaal bekijken. Maar waarom vergelijken? Op zichzelf en losstaand vind ik 'Political Animals' meer dan geslaagd.

Overigens, 'Political Animals' krijgt betere recensies dan 'The Newsroom'. Ook op cinema.nl (NRC/Volkskrant) wordt 'Political Animals' ten zeerste aangeraden. Zo zie je maar, HBO krijgt niet alleen maar lovende kritieken. Lees maar:

EW.com: Why did 'Political Animals' get better reviews than 'The Newsroom'?

On Sunday night, the first installment of the USA network miniseries Political Animals premiered opposite the fourth episode of The Newsroom. Both offer big-canvas portraits of workplace environments that fascinate the media (politics and, well, the media); both star actors who normally don’t “do” television (Sigourney Weaver; Jeff Daniels); both come from producers who’ve done interesting TV work in the past (Everwood and Jack & Bobby from Greg Berlanti; The West Wing and SportsNight from Aaron Sorkin). While no one would argue that Sorkin’s resume doesn’t carry more weight (a feature film career that includes The Social Network, A Few Good Men, and Moneyball — of which I really liked two out of three — will do that for a fella), Berlanti’s work here feels fully up to the level of Sorkin’s latest as fast-paced entertainment. It’s also received better reviews in the most prominent outlets.

Which leads to the question: Why?

The Newsroom is on classy HBO and arrives with the most thoroughgoing TV critique of the TV news media since Jon Stewart sat down for an interview with Rachel Maddow. Political Animals is on USA, home of Suits and “Characters Welcome” and features a performance by Ciaran Hinds as Weaver’s ex-husband ex-President so hammy, Jimmy Dean recently called from the grave to see if he could do the “Political Animals Pork Sausage” merchandizing.

Still, Political Animals, at least based on two episodes I’ve seen, is the more enjoyable, less irritating viewing experience for a few reasons. First, it is what it is: A glossy nighttime soap with particular things to say about how women are treated in politics and the media, packaged in a way that suits the product. The Newsroom is, with the exception of a few performances (Jeff Daniels’; Thomas Sadoski’s; Sam Waterston’s; maybe Jane Fonda’s), an overreaching drama that tries to pass itself off as a tough, realistic, insider expose. With, last night, Coldplay music and the shooting of Gabby Giffords used as a shorthand way to clinch an hour-long argument about how rotten the Real Housewives franchise is.

Political Animals, for the way it showcases and vividly delineates the characters played by Weaver and Carla Gugino and Ellen Burstyn, a good example of melodrama that is straining at something interesting — to work in the tradition female-admiring filmmakers such as Douglas Sirk and George Cukor. By contrast, The Newsroom represents its fine actresses, including Emily Mortimer and Allison Pill, as intelligent flakes who are present to serve as foils for Guys Who Know The Real Score. I mean, did you see this week’s latest Maggie-loves-Jim-but-loses-it-denying-herself scenes? (If Holly Hunter’s Jane Craig from James L. Brooks’ Broadcast News could watch The Newsroom, she’d be sweating as much as Albert Brooks did, nervous for the well-being of her sisters-in-broadcasting.)

Whether or not these factors consciously figured into the reviews of either of these shows, I cannot know, but the underlying tone of many reviews, including my own, tap into the same feeling: that Political Animals accomplishes more of what it sets out to do, in the right format and with the right approach to its excellent cast, than The Newsroom. Of course, who knows — this is weekly television: It’s possible that as Animals unreels the rest of its story, and Newsroom moves on through the rest of its (longer) season and goes into its (renewed) next, the latter may ultimately prove superior to the former.

But right now, I think the critics and the audience know which show seems more satisfying.

[Mr Hayes]

Nog een goede recensie. Deze is van The Huffington Post:

HuffingtonPost: 'Political Animals' Review: Sigourney Weaver Owns It

Before I get to my positive review of "Political Animals" (premieres on Sunday, July 15 at 10 p.m. ET on USA Network), which manages to be both mildly subversive and very enjoyable, I'd like to recommend two recent essays by Time TV critic James Poniewozik.

In the pieces (one of which is behind Time's paywall), he makes quite a few compelling observations about the twilight of the anti-hero era in television. Like James, I gladly acknowledge that many of the masterpieces of television's Golden Age revolve around transgressive males, but I'm with him when he says he's ready for that trend to take a back seat for a while.

It's not that there haven't been other kinds of shows in the last decade or so -- dramas and comedies that offered compelling ruminations on community, altruism, optimism and pessimism -- but the archetype of the self-absorbed hetero guy trying to negotiate his masculine role amid society's changing expectations, etc ... Well, we've been there, done that, got the Bada Bing t-shirt. It's been a terrific ride -- and I certainly don't want it to completely end -- but it's about time for some departures from the most influential Golden Age formulas.

The good news is, I think some of the people who write for and commission television are as ready for a change as I am. As I noted in my "Girls" review, part of what made that HBO show such a breath of fresh air is that its characters are nothing like the proprietor of a Deadwood saloon or a certain Albuquerque meth cooker. Carrie Mathison of "Homeland," Mia the trans woman of "Hit and Miss," the more comedically oriented Max on "Happy Endings" and Ron Swanson of "Parks and Recreation": Among their most winning qualities is the fact that they're not like anyone I've seen on TV before.

You've seen "Political Animals'" Elaine Barrish Hammond before, because, let's face it, she's Hillary Clinton in a nicer pantsuit. In this energetic and delicious six-part miniseries, Sigourney Weaver plays Elaine, the ambitious wife of Bud, a hard-living, charming Southern man who was president for two terms. As "Political Animals" opens, she's making her bid for the presidency, and as she continues to travel the corridors of power, she has to contend with Bud's legacy as a womanizer, her complicated feelings about him and her family, and her reputation as a cold, calculating opportunist.

Yep, the Clinton parallels are that obvious, but even if the show sits squarely within USA's wheelhouse -- it's not a cynical takedown by any means -- "Political Animals'" forthrightness about examining the costs and exhilaration of political life is refreshing. It combines the sly wit of the viral hit Texts from Hillary with the old-fashioned pleasures of a night-time soap, and it's anchored by terrific lead performances from Weaver and Carla Gugino, who plays the Hammonds' journalistic nemesis Susan Berg.

One of the main pleasures of "Political Animals" is watching these two women, who don't particularly like each other, square off in long, frisky dialogue scenes that both actresses clearly relish. Without having them descend into the conversational equivalent of hair-pulling catfights (thank God), creators Greg Berlanti and Laurence Mark allow the women to talk very frankly about being perceived as bitches by the public and by colleagues, and muse unsentimentally on what they can and can't do about that.

I certainly can't recall that kind of conversation on the small screen lately. If there's one thing that television has done pretty consistently over the years, it's turned ambitious women into villains, sluts, freaks or other kinds of creatures to be feared. As I said in this week's Talking TV podcast, one of the things I liked best about "Grey's Anatomy," at least in its early seasons, is that it calmly ignored this TV tradition.

"Political Animals" is another show that takes it as a given that women are every bit as consumed by ambition, sexual jealousy, professional gamesmanship, insecurities and energetic optimism as any guy at the top of his field. Here, these elements are lightly examined and turned into the stuff of soapy drama; they're not the fodder for the creation of harridans or Tragic Ladies. Elaine and Susan actually enjoy doing their jobs and playing power games at the highest levels. And given how often the word is bandied about, the first two hours of "Political Animals" make a decent run at reclaiming the word "bitch" and turning it into a compliment.

"Political Animals" is on firm ground whenever it focuses on Elaine, Susan and Bud, a role that Ciarán Hinds occupies a bit stiffly at first but gradually grows into. In the first two episodes, the capable actors James Wolk and Sebastian Stan get a bit less to do as the Hammonds' sons; one has struggled to establish his own career and the other has trod the unglamorous path of the dutiful son who serves his parents' political careers. It's not that the Good Son-Bad Son dynamic feels out of place here, but let's hope there's more to it than that before the show finishes its summer run. As for Ellen Burstyn, who plays Elaine's mildly sloshed ex-showgirl mother, she makes lip-smacking meals of her occasional showcase scenes, but it's Weaver's charisma that clearly dominates this well-made souffle.

Sure, a few lines land with a thud and the Hammonds' world seems a little claustrophobic (we see few aides, meetings, hearings, etc.; the USA show's budget is clearly not in HBO territory), but these are mere quibbles. More seriously, you could argue that the poisonous aspects of the political scene of the '90s are rather neatly (perhaps too neatly) elided, and I'm not the first observer to note that "Political Animals" is something of a fantasia on the Clinton years.

But however one voted back then, "Political Animals" hews fairly closely to the USA tone and smartly employs any number of light-drama conventions, thus it can likely be enjoyed simply as an entertainment (and that's one of many things that sets it apart from "The Newsroom," another aspirational story about power players that is much preachier and emphatically condescending to its female characters).

"Political Animals" is predicated on the idea that those in public life are not entirely cynical and corrupt, but as flawed and conflicted as the rest of us, and it makes the case that the people who run the country are usually damaged and difficult. But then, the most interesting people often are.

[Guess who?]

Ja ik had toen geen zin om een uitgebreid epistel te schrijven.

Ik vind de serie grotendeels erg interessant, de politieke stukken zijn goed uitgewerkt en bevallen me erg. Maar! De familiedrama-elementen vind ik écht te soaperig. Dat vind ik jammer.
Maarja, ik blijf het wel kijken want de serie is verder wel boeiend.

[Miriam]

Binnenkort eens de overige afleveringen bekijken. Hoewel het nog steeds iets te veel soap en overdreven drama naar mijn smaak is, is het best interessant om te volgen.

[Mr Hayes]

Heb net de season finale gezien van 'Political Animals'. Ik ga niks verklappen, maar ik was niét teleurgesteld. Wát een plotwending zeg. Aanvankelijk zou 'Political Animals' hooguit een 6-delige USA-mini-serie zijn, maar deze laatste, 6e, aflevering riekt naar een 2e seizoen.

Het mooie van deze serie vind ik, dat ie grotendeels 'time-sync' lijkt te lopen met de huidige presidentsverkiezingen in Amerika. Even...héél even dacht ik: Wie wordt er nu daadwerkelijk vice-presidentskandidaat op het Democratische ticket: Hillary Rodham Clinton? Of toch Elaine Barrish Hammond? Find out yourself http://thedailyheynow.com/post/29998584 ... hould-have .

Overigens zijn de tv ratings voor een kabel TV-serie als 'Political Animals' meer dan goed. En als Sigourney Weaver Emmy Award en Golden Globe Award nominaties in de wacht gaat slepen......dan komt er wel een 2e seizoen. Maar vanaf maandag.....een nieuwe aflevering van 'The Republican National Convention' . LIVE vanuit Tampa, Florida (als de orkaan geen roet in het eten gooit.).

[Miriam]

Ja het ligt er wel erg dik boven op dat dit gebaseerd is op Clinton. Alhoewel Elaine toch een stuk bekwamer en overtuigender overkomt dan Hillary