(courtesy IMP Awards)
UPLOAD S3, E1-3
Death has never been so complicated.
Back in them thar olden days, people died, they were buried, those left behind believed they had gone to a better place and gave the goods they’d need in their grave to make the most of it, everyone (bar the dead person who was in paradise naturally) mourned, and that, rather sadly and simply, was that. But as with everything in the digital age which, far from being the simpler time we were promised, free of drudgery, toil, cares and woe (all still with us, people, clearly the future-is-fab marketing people lied … and where is my hoverboard, by the way), all kinds of messy and complicated, death is now a full-on complicated labyrinth of social hierarchy, capitalism run amok, democratic sedition and communication with the dead that puts paid to any idea that shuffling off this mortal coil is the end of the line. In fact, in the return of Upload for a third season – read reviews of season one and season two – death is full of plots and AIs learning to become humans, billionaires plotting and multiple Nathans (Robbie Amell), one alive again in a time-limited download body and one still in the digital afterlife if you can afford it of Lakeview.
In some ways, thing are blissfully happy. Alive Nathan is blissfully happy with Nora (Andy Allo), albeit with a few kinks in the road to paradise courtesy of the real world meeting long distance expectations and getting a little bloodied & bruised and disappointed, while digital Nathan, taken from a back-up who doesn’t remember dumping Ingrid (Allegra Edwards), is feeling loved up with a woman he previously had dumped, all due to the fact that the back-up is a month old. (Yep, they’re not continuously backing up which again shows that while the digital afterlife, it is not perfect and only as good as what you can pay for as Nathan’s bestie Luke, played by Kevin Bigley discovers when the funding for veterans runs out and he faces being evicted from Lakeview). Even Mora’s on-again, off-again BFF, Aleesha (Zainab Johnson), who’s rising up the ranks of Horizon, , Lakeview’s parent company, is discovering that love takes some unexpected forms.
So, LOTS of love BUT, and here’s the downside to all that digital Romeo stuff, real world Nathan and Nora discover a plot by some nefarious billionaires to upload poor people by the millions to a promised superlative afterlife and then, well, oops, server crash! That’s where the voter suppression comes in, and while Nathan and Nora do good and try to stop it in its tracks, that doesn’t stop some very dark things happening in a society which, while it has sophisticated ways to get people around – self-drive limos, yes please – and to get them food – 3D printers are, again if you can afford them, super cool and capable of giving you anything – has ever greater chasms between rich and poor, in death and in life. It’s a wholly unequal world, and while Upload has a lot of fun with some future world-building and some AI humanising, brought to comedic life by the mischievous genius of Owen Danials who plays A.I. Guy, it has some some fairly serious points to make about the direction on which society is heading. It’s its customary mix of the silly and the serious and it works, partly because the world-building is so organically smooth and the messaging slips into the wider narrative with elegance and meaning, but also because the characters are just so beautifully realised. This is a sitcom that has a heart, a funny bone and an observant brain and the first episodes of the new season, which sees the show become less rom-com and more funny conspiracy busting with love bundled in, use them all well, building things ready for what is sure to be a wholly engaging, funny and thoughtful back end to the third season.
Upload streams on Prime Video.
FRASIER REBOOT E3-4
Watching the first two episodes of what is commonly being referred to as the Frasier reboot, although the creators of the latest iteration of the eponymous protagonist’s (played by Kelsey Grammer) journey prefer to call it his “third act”, it felt a lot like going somewhere new where you know a very familiar face but where everything feels bewilderingly new. All the new stuff is actually pretty good, though maybe not quite as good as you remember the place where you first knew the person, but it’s enjoyable enough that you want to stick around purely because it means you’re back with that person. That sense of being back with an old friend in unsettlingly new settings is still there when you watch episodes three and four, with a lingeringly melancholic feeling that characters you loved like Niles and Daphne (David Hyde Pierce and Jane Leeves respectively), dad Martin (John Mahoney) and Roz (Peri Gilpin; she does pop up in a cameo in the reboot as does Frasier’s ex Lilith, played by Bebe Neuwirth) are nowhere to be seen, but as three goes into four particularly, the all-new Frasier begins to feel very much its own peculiarly good creation.
It helps of course that the dynamic between father and son – Frasier, awash with Rockefeller levels of cash thanks to a lucrative TV career as a pop psychiatrist, has bought a place in Boston so he can teach at Harvard and his now adult firefighter son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott) – is now nicely established and is less adversarial and more gently needling in a friendly way that recognises how different they are. (The reboot has a great deal of fun playing off the old white collar/blue collar dynamic that made the earlier 11-year run of Frasier so incredibly clever, funny and, at times, touching; obviously now its generationally reversed with Frasier the confounded dad struggling to relate to a son.) The love is clearly there, as it was between Martin and Frasier, and it really comes beautifully to the fore in the fourth episode where Frasier accompanies Freddy to the fire station and gets a sense of what he does (and where he meets an amusing new spotty canine nemesis). While the day doesn’t quite as planned – rather hilariously Niles and Daphne’s son David (Anders Keith) is mistaken for an orphan by the other firefighters resulting in some classic Frasier verbal misunderstandings and slapstick – the episode ends up, thanks in part to a chat Frasier has with Eve (Jess Salgueiro), in father and son sharing a really movingly lovely moment together, ameliorated by some chilli-triggered comedy.
It not only cements the central relationship in the reboot around which the emotional heart of the sitcom beats, but it proves, along with some wonderful scenes between Frasier and his new Harvard colleagues, old friend Alan (Nicholas Lyndhurst) and boss Olivia (Toks Olagundoye), that what might’ve felt a little forced and unfamiliar in the first two episodes already has developed a delightful sense of the rapport and rhythm of old, and with some jokes about “I’m listening” and the coldness of Lilith thrown in (to a quiz night at the pub no less; seems Frasier isn’t as crusty as he once was), what might’ve have felt gently jarring and a little melancholic in becoming something warm and comedically comforting that will likely keep getting better until we have a sitcom eminently worthy of the Frasier name.
Frasier is currently streaming on Paramount+ with the remaining episodes of the first season releasing weekly until 7 December.
And let’s dive behind the scenes …