(courtesy YouTube (c) AppleTV+)
Still Up (S1, E5-8)
The will-they, wont-they dance of the first half of the debut season of Still Up, naturally ramps up considerably in the back half but this being a British series, things don’t quite play out as rom-com obvious as you might assume. In fact, while it becomes clear in the final episode there are FEELINGS between Lisa (Antonia Thomas) and Danny (Craig Roberts) that go well beyond simply being insomniac comrades-in-arms, Still Up rather cleverly manages to allow the two protagonists to reveal how they feel without completely upsetting the apple cart. In that respect, Still Up evokes the usual look and feel of British rom-coms which serve up goosebump romance but with a dash of real world grounding which recognises that while love, true love is a wondrously god and seemingly inevitable thing, that it can run into roadblocks and that life isn’t as simple as us simply making a decision, come what may. This is beautifully brought to the fore in the final episode when ——— SPOILERS AHEAD !!!!! ———- Danny, responding to one passing comment from Lisa, races to her place to lay his heart well and truly on the line.
Caught in a real dilemma about whether she loves her sweetly goodhearted if dull boyfriend Veggie (Blake Harrison) enough, she lets slip that she liked him from the moment she met him at the wedding where his on-the-rise girlfriend dumped in spectacularly cruel and brusque fashion. It’s been obvious that some sort of attraction was in play, but through these four brilliantly good episodes which mix verdant comedy with affecting humanity with a joyfully heartwarming, laugh-eliciting ease, neither of them felt they could do anything about it even if, as in “The Road Trip” and “The Horse”, it became clear that each would sacrifice quite a lot for the other, especially if they were in some sort of trouble. Buoyed by vivaciously good low-key performances by Thomas and Roberts, Still Up really makes you feel incredibly invested in where these two people end up, but such is the care taken with every one involved, including the pivotal secondary characters as such as Veggie who is a Good Guy and not a douche to be jettisoned for true love (which is what a regular rom-com, no matter how well done, might do), you want them to get to the finish line in ways that feel true to life just outside our window. While rom-coms are by their very nature escapist, for them to really make a lasting impact they need to feel somewhat bound by the real world and Still Up is to winningly lovely degree. It is also full of some batsh*t crazy and hilariously surreal moments such as when Danny, staring down his agoraphobia to go to Lisa’s aid when a drunken hen’s night sees her wandering London lost and alone, ends up with a taxi who, let’s just say, mixes the personal with the professional to a super messy but narratively enhancing degree.
Still Up is an absolute joy of a rom-com sitcom that nails the surreal comedy, handles the hearts of all ts characters with real care and understanding and which crafts a cosy if challenging world we’re happy to enter into, and which knows just to serve up resolution without cutting off a cool entry point to a hoped-for second season.
Still Up streams on AppleTV+
Star Trek: Lower Decks (S1, E8-10)
Hard to believe we have reached the end of a fourth season of Star Trek: Lower Decks but alas we have and with its ending, we’re in a Star Trek desert until Discovery premieres its fifth and final season sometime early in 2024. But we before we get to those long and dustily dry reaches, repeats of earlier shows and seasons notwithstanding, we have the pleasure of three final, artfully realised episodes, two of which form a classic Star Trek storytelling device – the “to be continued” two-parter. But before we hit that double episode, we have the distinct pleasure of “Caves”, which encapsulates everything there is to love about the one of the most creative shows in the franchise to ever burst forth from a wormhole.
First up – the setting! Star Trek loves caves, freaking LOVES the things. Maybe it’s the primal environment, maybe the sense of danger inherent in them or their otherworldliness and the capacity that gives to imaginative ship-in-a-bottle storytelling; whatever the attraction, they pop up in lots of episodes in virtually every show and so Lower Decks, as Lower Decks if wont to do, had some fun with them, quipping about caves being unstable and scary locations where all kinds of things happen that aren’t entirely welcome but in Star Trek’s universe, all too common.
Mariner: Any, uh, unspeakable evils in here? Can we skip past the waiting and just attack us now?
Boimler: Will you stop it? I’ll just call for an evac. [clicks communicator futilely]
Mariner: Bunch of rocks always beats centuries of technological progress. (TV Fanatic)
In the midst of all the meta affectionate satirising of a major plot device for the entire franchise, the show told us a story, or rather a series of stories, that first explored how spun apart Boimler (Jack Quaid), Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Tendi (Noël Wells) and Rutherford (Eugene Cordero) had become after their promotions and yet, in a final tale, how much their friendship, the emotional core of the show by any measure, still meant to them. All these emotionally fraught and then heartfelt confessions were witnessed by an aggressive luminous green moss which, far from wanting to eat them, actually loved hearing these tales. There’s actually something else at work there but should be left to the viewing because it’s very Q-level funny but suffice to say, in amongst all the quips and self-referential oneliners, Lower Decks both paid homage and made merry with the role caves play in the franchise’s storytelling in a way that gloriously laid bare why this show is so damn good.
The final two episodes of the season, as noted, were a conclusion of the loosely-running arc that had popped up here or there in the season and which looked like, for all its early menace, like it was going to go precisely nowhere. But go somewhere it did, in what, among other things, gave the fab foursome, and Star Trek generally a chance to have some real fun with the Ferengi, the Romulans and especially the Klingon with one in particular, Ma’ah (“The Inner Fight”) who accidentally ended up as Mariner’s therapist, helping her deal with some past trauma, and totally subverting the fact that the two should be fighting. While the two-parter tells a clever little tale of skullduggery and plotting and planning, it actually functions mostly as a way of helping Mariner deal with her sh*t, and getting everyone to get back together again, with T’Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz) roped in more or less permanently for good reason. While the closeness is rent asunder by the final episode’s end, that’s expected – you know why it’s coming and you can blame the Orions for it, hint, hint – and you know it’ll all be fixed by the start of season five because Lower Decks are forever, and will continue to be one of the main reasons to watch the show when it returns for a fifth season.
Star Trek: Lower Decks streams on Paramount+
And here’s a clip from the season finale …