In 2014, Seth Rogen nearly dismantled a Hollywood studio by accident when his Kim Jong-un send-up The Interview brought down the wrath of North Korean hackers on the heads of executives at Sony Pictures. A decade and a bit on, the wheel has turned full circle, with Rogen playing the head of fictional Continental Studios in the outrageously enjoyable and cameo-crammed The Studio (Apple TV+, from Wednesday).
Cameos? The series, created by Rogen and his Interview writing partner Evan Goldberg, is a hit parade of Hollywood A-listers. Martin Scorsese turns up in the pilot playing an exaggerated version of himself in his funniest screen turn since he portrayed that paranoid passenger in Taxi Driver. He is in good company, with The Studio featuring self-mocking turns from Steve Buscemi, Charlize Theron, Sarah Polley, Ron Howard, Anthony Mackie and Zack Snyder. One instalment is a full-blown mini-noir movie that riffs on Chinatown and Vertigo while giving a matinee idol an excuse to demonstrate his comedy chops.
However, a Hollywood satire cannot thrive on novelty casting alone. Rogen and Goldberg are well aware of this, and The Studio is, at heart, a brilliantly written workplace satire that mixes the cringe factor of Curb Your Enthusiasm with the insider baseball qualities of Robert Altman’s The Player. It’s beautifully made too. Rogen and Goldberg, who together directed all 10 episodes, favour extended takes, similar to the one-shot approach employed to such acclaim in Netflix’s Adolescence.
Crucially, it never gets high on its own Tinseltown vapours. There is no attempt to glamorise Hollywood, and the show doesn’t go overboard with letting the stars send themselves up. The noir episode would be a fantastic tribute, even without a famous actor strutting about.
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The Studio also appreciates the straightforward hilarity of watching supposedly competent people fail to deal with everyday work challenges – as happens when Rogen’s Matt Remick tries to work up the courage to tell an Oscar-winning director that his new prestige picture needs to be shortened.
[ Seth Rogen: ‘I wake up in the morning, I make a cup of coffee and I roll a joint’Opens in new window ]
The biggest joke is that Remick is a cineaste who wants to restore the magic of film – yet is also so pathetically careerist that he agrees on the spot to a terrible Kool-Aid cash-grab movie, as demanded by his boss (a wonderfully blustering Bryan Cranston). His lackeys are just as pathetic, starting with Ike Barinholtz as his cocaine-snorting number two, Sal, and Kathryn Hahn as PR flunky, Maya.
Often, The Studio doesn’t feel like satire at all. When Remick farms out the Kool-Aid feature to Forgetting Sarah Marshall director Nick Stoller, his suggested family-friendly take on the idea sounds chillingly like a spec script for a new Pixar blockbuster.
Just as plausible is Matt agreeing on the spot to finance Scorsese’s latest pet project – only to then discover he’s made promises he can’t possibly keep. All of these scenarios feel just one or two pitch meetings away from reality – ensuring that, beneath the laughter, The Studio has a serious point about the creative redundancy of 21st-century Hollywood. It is a love letter to cinema that doubles as a cry into the void for what the medium has become – while delivering top-drawer chuckles at a ferocious clip.
