‘The Lowdown’ Is That Show. Plus, ‘Heat 2’ Hype Meter and ‘House of Guinness.’

Chris and Andy talk about the modern-day hype cycles around film releases and why it feels like television drops don’t get that same level of attention in the wake of more ‘Heat 2’ news (5:38). Then, they make the case for why ‘The Lowdown’ is one of the best shows of the year and what they've been asking for from this era of auteur-driven television (27:51). Finally, they talk about Netflix’s ‘House of Guinness,’ from creator Steven Knight, and why, even though Knight is aiming high, the show misses the mark (43:55). Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of ‘The Watch’ and so much more! Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producers: Kaya McMullen and Kai Grady Video Producer: Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 2:36Chris Ryan?

  Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at theringer.com. And joining me on the other line from the House of Guinness, it's Andy Greenwald.

• 2:49Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not, though. I'm one of the, what are they called? The Fennies? The Feenies?

• 2:52Chris Ryan?

  The Feenans?

• 2:54Andy Greenwald?

  The Feenans. Yes.

• 2:55Chris Ryan?

  You're not a Feenan, my guy. Yeah, Feenan, yeah.

• 2:58Andy Greenwald?

  Which are the ones that are like pro-England? Because that's where I am.

• 3:01Chris Ryan?

  That's you.

• 3:02Andy Greenwald?

  I'm not saying that's what I am, but that's where I am.

• 3:04Chris Ryan?

  Greenwald is in London. I am in Philadelphia. Um, it's an East Coast America, uh, old world podcast today. Andy, it's great to see you. We're going to talk a little bit about the last couple of episodes of the Lowdown that we've seen, Episodes 3 and 4. We're going to talk a little bit about House of Guinness. I have some other stuff for you today. It's great to see your face. How's England treating you?

• 3:28Chris Ryan?

  You're muted.

• 3:29Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I was going to say, it's a, it's a country and experience of highs and lows. One of the lows being my brand-new, uh, travel microphone that has a mute button right on the soft spot where I like to touch the microphone. So that's going to be fun. Um, I'm going to be like Stephen Miller when I say my opinions about House of Guinness.

• 3:45Andy Greenwald?

  Like, are you there?

• 3:46Chris Ryan?

  Wait, when does Stephen Miller ever cut out?

• 3:49Andy Greenwald?

  You didn't see this clip?

• 3:50Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 3:50Andy Greenwald?

  See, that's the thing. I've been awake for hours. So, you know, they were interviewing him on CNN, and he was like, "We declare plenary freedoms, plenary authority to deploy troops." What, and then he just stopped talking because he realized he'd given the game away.

• 4:05Chris Ryan?

  Because he realized he was committing an act of treason.

• 4:07Andy Greenwald?

  Sure. Anyway, I was going to say. Allegedly. Um, I'm, I can do that now, by the way, because I'm in a different country.

• 4:14Chris Ryan?

  It would be funny if, like, The Watch was Stephen Miller's way of getting away from it all.

• 4:19Chris Ryan?

  She was like, God, it's been tough. I've been invading multiple cities.

• 4:24Andy Greenwald?

  Why won't these guys weigh in on English teachers as too? I would say that my experience has had some wonderful highs, like this morning when I was strolling down the lane schlepping this new microphone and recording rig. And a, a very kind Englishman said that, hi, and he said he loved the pod. I would say the lows include, um, there is a washer dryer in this flat that, um, I've now run a small load of clothes on the dry cycle, uh, twice.

• 4:55Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:55Andy Greenwald?

  Each cycle is two hours and 50 minutes.

• 4:58Chris Ryan?

  They don't, they don't have electricity over there. It really does make you wonder like I, I definitely want to save the planet. I worry about my carbon footprint. I do think that, um, America is going to be a giant data center soon.

• 5:12Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah.

• 5:13Chris Ryan?

  But it is cool to be able to dry your clothes. I'm like 20 minutes.

• 5:16Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, what, to dry my boxers and my sweatshirt is equivalent to how many genmojis? Like just, just put it to me, give me the numbers. I would also say the other tell that I'm far away and that the jet lag is roaring is at like, when you were deep, deep sleep last night, I was definitely weeping to the live performance of Golden by the real actresses who play Huntrix in K-pop Demon Hunters on the Jimmy Sound Program.

• 5:46Chris Ryan?

  This definitely feels like we're, where you're breaking from reality with me.

• 5:53Andy Greenwald?

  Listen, this might be a vulnerable pod. Sorry.

• 5:55Chris Ryan?

  It might be. Um, I wanted to kind of keep it pretty loose today. Thursdays are, are, are chaotic episodes. There are a couple of news things that I wanted to bounce off of you. So I'm on the East Coast because I was here to do a big picture live show with Sean and Amanda. It went great. It was really, really fun. It was at 92Y, 92nd Street Y. It was with Dave and Griffin from Blank Check, which is an awesome movie podcast that people should be listening to if they don't already. And, uh, we were drafting New York movies. It was very fun. The spirit of cinema was in the air in New York City because the New York Film Festival is currently underway. And, uh, you know, Sean was hitting up a couple of movies from there.

• 6:38Chris Ryan?

  And like the night after our show, uh, no, Monday night. So our show is Saturday. Monday night, uh, Marty Supreme, um, the new Timothy Chalamet movie that's coming in Christmas came, uh, did a surprise screening on Monday night for MYFF. And it was like pandemonium called, you know, like in terms of like the word of mouth.

• 6:57Andy Greenwald?

  Did you see it?

• 6:58Chris Ryan?

  I did not see it, but Sean saw it.

• 7:00Andy Greenwald?

  Did you see Sean? Sean fired off an all time tweet. You might need to read it on this podcast. Great tweet, Sean. Truly.

• 7:07Chris Ryan?

  But my, my kind of observation about it was just that like, there really is, I think between that, between One Battle After Another, a lot of stuff like, we, we are moving into award season with movies, but we are, are definitely in like a, a state of like peak hype for movies, where I think that, um, because of how vibrant online cinephilia, I guess, or how, whatever you want to call it, like, like film fandom and film criticism is, there's like an ecosystem to promote and hype up and at times knock down films. And, you know, I think, you know, they did a, Big Picture did a conversation with Van over the weekend about, um, One Battle

• 7:52Chris Ryan?

  After Another. It was basically like an expanded conversation and expanded in-depth kind of look at it. That I felt like it was just really a cool thing to listen to after many, many, uh, rounds of, of hosannas being thrown at One Battle After Another. So I was thinking about all this and I noted with real interest yesterday that the Heat Two casting news and studio news, it just exploded. Uh, it's moved from Warner Brothers to Amazon MGM. Uh, Jerry Bruckheimer and Scott Stuber, two incredibly heavy hitters are attached to produce it. And Leonardo DiCaprio is apparently circling the Chris Sherrillis, the Val Kilmer role rather than the Neil McCauley role. So this is crazy amount of

• 8:34Chris Ryan?

  news. It does seem like this is happening. I still wake up every day and I'm like, this is, this can't be real, but it really, really, really does seem real. My, the reason why I'm telling you about these two things is as I kind of was getting ready for today's pod, for pods in the future, for, for the two of us, I was like, why doesn't TV have this kind of hype around it? You know, I was thinking about Pluribus, the, the new Vince Gilligan show that's coming on Apple, which is from the creator of Breaking Bad. And it's been, um, You're releasing these like very small teasers that I think are doing a great job of hyping up, you know, like creating like a sort of interest around the show.

• 9:16Chris Ryan?

  But it doesn't have like, when's the last show that's come out that you feel like had

• 9:23Chris Ryan?

  what one battle after another or Marty Supreme is getting in terms of like people running out of a room and be like, I have to tell everyone. I suppose the closest thing I can think of is Adolescence. And that weekend of of of just like breathless, have you seen this?

• 9:40Andy Greenwald?

  I think first of all, it's a good question. It's a complicated question. I think the only equivalent we have to wide release in television at this point is Netflix. So you can see phenomenons build almost in a classic box office sense. We saw with Baby Reindeer, we saw with Adolescence. Beyond that, the similarities to cinema continue because you're not really going to get giant premiere numbers for something that isn't a sequel. And by sequel, I mean either the second season of something that did very well, or something that is directly based on prominent IP. That's pretty much the only way to get eye popping numbers. Everything, which doesn't mean those are the only things

• 10:22Andy Greenwald?

  that are considered hits. It's just that the language that TV executives use internally is all is still a lot more growth oriented with things developing over time. Like I think, for example, and we're going to, you know, we've been talking about it every Monday. The sense I get from HBO is that they're extremely happy with Task, not just because it's extremely good.

• 10:41Chris Ryan?

  That's the sense I get from the people in Philadelphia as well.

• 10:44Andy Greenwald?

  Are they?

• 10:47Andy Greenwald?

  But um, but the reason that they're excited is not just the quality, of course, but it's because the numbers apparently have gone up week to week, have ultimately outperformed Mayor of Easttown, which isn't to say the first episode outperformed the first episode of Mayor. What they're looking at is retention over time. I guess I would turn the question back to you and say, there definitely is a hype cycle with movies that understands very well now how to manipulate is a strong word, how to interface with burgeoning the letterbox army and get people fired up about format mania and all of that. There was an interesting article about the Warner Brothers, not just their success at the box office this year, but about their marketing team and all of them being under 30 and like being engaged with.

• 11:33Andy Greenwald?

  Online life in a way that other movie studios aren't. All of that said, Smashing Machine tanked, right? Again, that's not a value judgment. It might be a great film. I would like to see it, I think.

• 11:47Chris Ryan?

  You know, you love UFC.

• 11:49Andy Greenwald?

  I love smashing. We're headed towards an era of machines. What's not to like? The, but like, that had everything. That had the full head full of steam in terms of like the standing ovation, the press tour, the narrative, like everyone seemed to understand, like Joe Popcorn understood that like The Rock was going for an Oscar this time. And, and the Letterboxd loonies were like, which Safdie is the best? Who knows? And then it was released with an absolute thud, right? So the, the success of one battle after another, I think, belies that. But all of which is to say, like, I'm excited to see Marty Supreme and I'm really hype off that because, literally because of Sean's tweet. I think he thinks I'm making fun of his tweet. I am not.

• 12:33Andy Greenwald?

  Our Phillies are down 0-2 right now, so I'm not in a position to make fun of Sean. I want to be very careful. But that's no guarantee that it's going to be successful.

• 12:42Chris Ryan?

  You're right. I mean, maybe it's this weird thing where it's like, the hype is disconnected from the actual success of the film. And maybe all these TV shows that when I am anecdotally asking if somebody has seen the lowdown and they're like, I don't know what you're talking about, doesn't actually indicate whether or not people are actually watching it. They're just maybe not participating in a hype cycle around it. Obviously, you and I kind of came of age professionally in this particular part of our careers at a time when like, Sunday nights ruled the pop culture week, seemingly, the television Sunday night. And the recaps of those shows would kind of drive conversation around them, the idea of a water cooler show. But this is just something I've been thinking about.

• 13:27Chris Ryan?

  I mean, Heat 2 probably won't roll.

• 13:31Chris Ryan?

  I would imagine until late next year, let's just say if everything went really, really well, and they nailed all the casting and they get Bradley Cooper, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Adam Driver to be in this movie, and it's going to be a globe trotting mega production run by an older man and Michael Mann.

• 13:49Andy Greenwald?

  First of all, international intrigue plus older men is the story of Earth for the last 10 years. So I don't really see a problem.

• 13:57Chris Ryan?

  My point is that like, this is like, I'm going to be anticipating this movie for multiple years, the same way I am for The Odyssey, and there's nothing like that in television. But then in this, on the flip side, I don't even know if that, if that really matters. I guess I'm just like, why isn't there more like?

• 14:13Andy Greenwald?

  Well, clearly you haven't been following my Reddit posts demanding Top of the Lake season three. You know, I'm just like, one of these days, it's going to come, it's going to come true. It's your spade, S2, let's go. I hear you about that. And I do want to add, I do want to do one more like heat check with you, like specifically about this news. But I feel like in a way, this conversation goes back to something that we've said before, which is that like, we are all in a Damon Lindelof show right now, because we are all existing in multiple timelines at the same time. We are, we have never been more now.

• 14:45Chris Ryan?

  Traveled across the ocean once.

• 14:47Andy Greenwald?

  Seriously. Well, did better than Oceanic, but you know, yeah, you know, there's always the return. Because we've never been more now, like more clued in to release dates, towards box office openings, towards things needing to, and also just the industry needing immediate return on these extravagant investments. Everything is geared towards the first week numbers, towards awards, towards box office, et cetera. But we've also never been so immersed in everything else that's come before.

• 15:17Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 15:18Andy Greenwald?

  So, and I think that our, our sense, like me currently with the actual Earth clock, I think our sense of what is happening gets a little bit blurred. Like, we are living in a reality where these Letterboxd loonies are like lining up to see Marty Supreme, they're already buying their format tickets or whatever, making sure they can see it in the best seats. And they are Also, you know, going to see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood every other week at the Vista and also going to see Big Lebowski, which I think in the collective consciousness now, I'm just pulling that movie out of the air. But like, that movie was not quote unquote, successful.

• 15:53Chris Ryan?

  No.

• 15:54Andy Greenwald?

  It was, it's a masterpiece.

• 15:56Chris Ryan?

  It's a cult classic, yeah.

• 15:57Andy Greenwald?

  It's a classic, but it's a cult classic that I think has sort of, sort of merged into just being a classic. And I think the perception of it is that that's a success, even though it made like 30 million bucks and was decidedly not the biggest movie of 1998 or whatever. And you could pull 100 other examples of that, right? Just to say that like, there are, right now on Netflix, there are out of the box hits like Adolescence, you know, which are critical darlings and commercial darlings and certainly cleaned up at the Emmys. But the other big story on Netflix this week is Halo is airing on Netflix. The really not that awesome, and I think, uh, originally Showtime and then Paramount Plus series that was just, I think it was just unwieldy, if nothing else.

• 16:41Andy Greenwald?

  And it's doing well because you put something on Netflix and so now everyone's like, season three.

• 16:47Andy Greenwald?

  So both of those things are happening at once and it's hard to square those into one easy narrative, I think.

• 16:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I guess that this is the trade off, right? Like when you have something like Smashing Machine and it comes out and there's all this like push around it. And then it doesn't do well in one metric, the one, the metric that really matters for new releases, which is box office. It winds up seeming like a complete failure. When you have something like The Lowdown, which we're going to talk about in a second, which I think you and I adore will be in our top 10s. We will push that boulder up the hill. I have no idea whether it's doing well. Uh, I have no idea whether people are watching it, whether they're saving five episodes to kind of get into it. Uh, you know, whether the act of watching something week to week that isn't hugely twisty and cliffhanger-y has basically been abandoned.

• 17:37Chris Ryan?

  And now people are like, yeah, I'll, I'll catch up like when I have a flight, I'll watch four of those or something like that. But on the flip side of that, you're not aware of failure either. I'm not aware that this quote unquote flopped. I wouldn't even know, a network would never tell us if it did, you know?

• 17:52Andy Greenwald?

  Well, I wanna, I gotta, I need a second to like put on my full Lowdown cape. So we will talk about that, but I think the other thing is that, that there are just many different. Shout out to another Lindelof show. There's a lot of narratives happening at once. Meaning the smashing machine is a box office failure. It is a, I still think it's a huge win for The Rock, who has successfully presented himself as a serious actor. And people who make decisions about casting and awards will consider it and remember it.

• 18:24Andy Greenwald?

  I think it's a failure for A24 in the sense that A24 is trying to pivot to becoming everybody's darling, not just an indie darling, and their budgets have gone way, way up. And I think they have real skin in the game now and can actually, you know, and those are, those are not insubstantial losses when they invest a lot of money into projects like that.

• 18:42Chris Ryan?

  It's not just.

• 18:43Andy Greenwald?

  Well, to, to balance it out. Exactly. So it's a lot of different stories all at once. Before we get to the lowdown, you can't say this big Heat news and not just like give your, give you, give me your 30 second stump speech. Because when I last was sort of, this is not my story to tell, but I will say that the last time I was kind of aware of it, the rumors were Apple was picking it up and Apple was picking it up. And that was dependent on Leo starring in the movie.

• 19:11Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 19:12Andy Greenwald?

  And Leo was assumed to be taking on the role of Neil. Is that right?

• 19:17Chris Ryan?

  That was what I said because he had a goatee.

• 19:21Andy Greenwald?

  Okay. I see your method. Seymour Hersh over here.

• 19:25Chris Ryan?

  I just said that it looked like he looked like young Robert De Niro in the one battle after another promo run that he did. Now that is a basically cleaned up version of Bob Ferguson from one battle after another. So it's not that strange that he had the goatee. But I think that most people looked at him and were like, okay, this is young Neil or younger Neil in the pre-Heat narrative. For people who don't know, Heat 2, written by Michael Mann and Meg Gardner, when it came out like 2022.

• 19:56Andy Greenwald?

  This is the book, not the film.

• 19:58Chris Ryan?

  Yes, it was the book and it's a novelization of a, of an idea, or it's a novel that Mann wrote with an acclaimed crime writer and a Meg Gardner. That basically does a prequel to Heat.

• 20:11Chris Ryan?

  Cutting back and forth between a prequel to Heat and a sequel to Heat.

• 20:14Andy Greenwald?

  That's like Godfather 2.

• 20:16Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, and the sequel to Heat follows the continuing adventures of Chris Hurlis, the Val Kilmer, uh, character in the original film as he goes into South America and becomes security for a Chinese triad, which is basically.

• 20:32Andy Greenwald?

  That's just fanfiction, dog.

• 20:33Chris Ryan?

  We can stop the watch when I introduce you as doing that.

• 20:37Andy Greenwald?

  Do you understand that you, I think you told me that dream in Good Luck Bar in 2015. Like, I, this is so wild.

• 20:44Chris Ryan?

  Where do you think Hurlis is now? And the pre-Heat stuff happens in Chicago and is a young Vincent, younger Vincent and a younger Neil kind of just missing each other in Chicago. And there is a Wayne Grove-esque character. I won't get into spoilers and stuff like that, but there are some incredible sequences in the novel in both the pre and post. And I imagine if they are undertaking it and if it has a $200 million price tag, which it seems to, that he is doing, he's, he's shooting the whole boat. He's doing the, the sequel and the prequel. Look, that's all I ever want in life is to see this. I, but I, I, I want this to be good. I don't want this to be a strange kind of like, um,

• 21:28Chris Ryan?

  like a, like inadvertent roast of Heat where it's like everybody's getting on stage and doing Heat bits, you know, and that like it, I, I want it to live up to what the original was. And because it's made so far from the, like, from when man shot Heat, which is now, you know, in the 90s.

• 21:47Andy Greenwald?

  30 years ago.

• 21:48Chris Ryan?

  It feels a little bit like, I'm just nervous for it to be like, uh, two years of waiting for it and then people be like, oh, that was all right.

• 21:56Andy Greenwald?

  Well, that's how I felt about Twin Peaks, The Return, and that worked out for me. So I believe in you.

• 22:01Chris Ryan?

  That's true. That's true.

• 22:03Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it worked out for me by being absolutely confounding and doing almost nothing of what the normies wanted.

• 22:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 22:09Andy Greenwald?

  But, so I don't know, I don't know if Scott Stuber and Jerry Bruckheimer are like, confound us, Michael.

• 22:14Chris Ryan?

  No, I think that they're like, we're gonna make sure this actually gets finished on time and that you are able to pull off the sequences. That you need to pull off to make this like a huge box office.

• 22:24Andy Greenwald?

  And to make it a plausible action movie that's released in theaters.

• 22:28Chris Ryan?

  Yes, yeah.

• 22:29Andy Greenwald?

  Not a not a not an art piece.

• 22:30Chris Ryan?

  A lot of my nervousness comes from despite the fact it's easy for me to like Ferrari. I'd be like, actually, you guys don't get it. Ferrari is good, or you guys don't get it. Black hat is good.

• 22:40Andy Greenwald?

  It is very easy for you to do that.

• 22:42Chris Ryan?

  Or Tokyo Vice Pilot is awesome. And no, everyone's like, okay, Crystal, you just would like if Michael Mann shot like a bird landing in a nest. And I'd be like.

• 22:52Andy Greenwald?

  That would be on task, I believe.

• 22:53Chris Ryan?

  I know. That's true.

• 22:56Andy Greenwald?

  That's a beautiful sequence.

• 22:57Chris Ryan?

  Birdman is task.

• 23:01Chris Ryan?

  I it's it's that's like underdog stuff. It's just, you know what I mean? That's like cheering for. That's like cheering for the six seed is when you're a big black hat guy. This is the one seed, man. There this is. This is an undefeated team going into the tournament, so. It's it's a little bit more nerve wracking and I think from everything that I have read, everything that I have heard, everything between the lines. All of this is contingent on DiCaprio's participation and DiCaprio has a pretty full dance card. He's supposed to be doing this Martin Scorsese movie that I believe he kind of like obliquely referenced to Sean in their conversation about. How he had been watching, rewatching Vertigo for something.

• 23:43Andy Greenwald?

  He's a Tim and Jennifer Lawrence, right?

• 23:44Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. Then he was supposedly going to do this Evel Knievel movie for Damien Chazelle, but it seems like Glenn Powell might do that now. And, yeah, like there's also this Hawaii gangster movie that Scorsese was gonna make with The Rock. So as somebody's like, things in production start, you know, as their as their dance card fills up. You just worry about like being able to hold all the actors, hold all the locations, hold all the money and will this happen? But I think Amazon MGM getting involved in this is really interesting. Because in some ways it's more significant even than the casting rumors is like producer producer rumors being confirmed than studio rumors being confirmed.

• 24:27Andy Greenwald?

  Can I ask you the one other thing that we still have on our plates to worry about?

• 24:30Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, sure.

• 24:31Andy Greenwald?

  In regards to he too, I worry about Austin Butler because he did a lot of weapons training, possibly for nothing.

• 24:37Chris Ryan?

  He could be getting ready for Miami Vice. Like, we have no idea. Like, there's, do you think that there's only one, one, one role out there that requires weapons training?

• 24:46Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, I watch three movies a year. Yes, I do think that. That is 100% what I think.

• 24:52Chris Ryan?

  Oh, my God.

• 24:54Andy Greenwald?

  Can we, can we talk about the other, the other, um, the big TV thing? I just thought it was interesting.

• 24:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, please.

• 25:01Andy Greenwald?

  Of course, I'm not prepared to talk about it, but I do want to talk about it. The,

• 25:05Chris Ryan?

  You're talking about the Dakota Fanning, uh, L, sorry, the L Fanning and Nicole Kidman Show discretion, right?

• 25:11Andy Greenwald?

  It's a show called Discretion. And the reason I bring it up is not necessarily because we have an opinion about the show or know anything about it, although it is relevant because it's an A24 TV production. And A24 is part of their, like, glow up and build up is getting into TV production. Um, this is a, like, a hot package in town. And by the way, just the fact that there's a hot package again is pretty significant considering how dire things have been for the last few months and years. Um, this is a project that was apparently subject to a big bidding war, and it was snapped up straight to series by our, uh, the new players in town. The Barry Weiss Boys ponied up to the table, and Paramount is, has bought this show. And it's a legal thriller, is all we know. Nicole

• 25:56Andy Greenwald?

  Kidman loves doing television shows, so does L Fanning. They're both very reliable. Also, Nicole Kidman has some free time now, I guess.

• 26:02Chris Ryan?

  Sure. So. Although not much since Lion is coming back.

• 26:05Andy Greenwald?

  That's a good point. That's a good point. Her dance card is still full, professionally speaking. Um, I just thought it was worth noting. A few weeks ago, we talked about, um, how really all it takes to shift the industry is one new whale showing up at the table. And that's what David Ellison and, you know, and his, and his dad have, have done. Um, I don't, I'd be very curious what the path of this show would have been in a pre-Skydance takeover era. It seems like it would have been, Apple took it off the board.

• 26:37Andy Greenwald?

  The implication that there was a quote unquote bidding war, I'll put it this way, like, I don't think AMC was just, you know, throwing in an ante and asking to like, see everyone's cards.

• 26:46Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 26:47Andy Greenwald?

  A bidding war to me in 2025 implies that Paramount outbid Netflix and Apple, which is significant, and which is something to watch going forward, in addition to maybe watching the show at some point in 2026.

• 26:59Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, I'm an idiot because, you know, when all of the Paramount stuff was happening last year, or over the course of the last couple of years, and I was sort of reading about it in the trades and reading about it, Bellamy's column, and it was like, is Ellison gonna get this from Shari Redstone, and is he gonna, is he gonna buy the mountain? And it almost seemed like he had to like scrape together money. This is just my, like, he was shaking couch cushions to find like the last million to get it over the line. And now that he has Paramount, it seems like, he's like, oh no, like, now the vault opens. And now I'm gonna buy Warner Brothers, and buy this show, buy the Duffers, and buy, like,

• 27:42Chris Ryan?

  and now he's like giving Mangold, James Mangold, overall, like, it seems like, you're right, like Paramount's a rival, but their willingness to spend, it's like, they may cut CBS News down to basically being like three hot take artists, but it does seem like they are spending a ton of money on, on actual shows and movies, which I think is a good thing for, for what's left of Hollywood.

• 28:07Andy Greenwald?

  Is 60 Minutes gonna be like that OZY.com, where is that dude being like, I've talked to Lisa Ling, or whatever, and everyone's like, this is a success, clearly. Anyway, Trump pardoned him. The fun thing is about the Paramount deal is maybe he really was just scraping things together a year and a half ago, but then all these weird coincidences happened, like, his dad just got permission to buy TikTok, you know, like, so it seems like, I don't know, like, fortune favors the bold, I guess.

• 28:35Chris Ryan?

  Why are we all like that? We should have thrown in just like a, we just like a cheeky offer for this Nicole Kidman show.

• 28:43Andy Greenwald?

  What was the show that we were bidding out? Our listeners will remember there, oh, no, we wanted to be heads of AMC. I still think that's a legitimate thing. I do think that they're, honestly, my pitch is, why not? The Anne Rice universe manages itself. God bless. We will retain the leadership structure behind the vampire shows. Like, that is my first order of business. Everything else, just let us.

• 29:04Chris Ryan?

  What's the first AMC catalog show that you would want to reboot?

• 29:09Andy Greenwald?

  Remember when?

• 29:10Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 29:12Andy Greenwald?

  Their first ever show before Mad Men. No, well, like, I think that, I think that we could get a little cheeky in the international marketplace, like AMC has been doing with, like, spy shows and things and co-pros. I think that there might be some opportunities to do the versions of, like, mid AMC shows, like Lodge 49, or the one that I never remember the name of, the Bob Odenkirk Lucky Hank.

• 29:40Chris Ryan?

  Yep.

• 29:40Andy Greenwald?

  I don't think either of the shows were complete successes, but I also don't think they were failures, and I think they scratched an itch that does exist in TV and can be done at a price point.

• 29:48Chris Ryan?

  It's that kind of middle-of-the-road thinking that's going to get us to the top.

• 29:52Andy Greenwald?

  I think 100%. The other thing is, though, I would greenlight the Sally Draper in the Downtown 81 Mad Men spinoff.

• 30:00Chris Ryan?

  This is why we've been put on this planet, to see Heat 2 come out and to put Sally Draper in the Mud Club.

• 30:06Andy Greenwald?

  Yep. Let's just do it. That will make that show.

• 30:09Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Andy Greenwald?

  Vote for us. Or, or we'll cut the government in on a sweetheart deal.

• 30:15Chris Ryan?

  That's right.

• 30:16Andy Greenwald?

  Whatever it takes.

• 30:17Chris Ryan?

  All right, let's take a quick break, and we'll go talk about the lowdown and House of Guinness.

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• 32:33Chris Ryan?

  Let's talk about episodes three and four of The Lowdown. Four was especially lovely to me, directed by Macon Blair and written by Duffy Boudreau. Macon Blair is a frequent collaborator with Jeremy Sonia. He also plays the lawyer in this series in Lowdown. And Duffy Boudreau is a name you may remember from especially the written by credit in Barry. He is a frequent collaborator with Bill Hader. Bill Hader and Duffy Boudreau, also from Tulsa, much like Sterling Harjo. So kind of a family affair here. And.

• 33:11Chris Ryan?

  I was thinking about how one term we used to use during the era of like truly peak prestige television was the idea of long form series television being novelistic, you know, and I think we referred frequently, people called The Wire like novelistic in its storytelling.

• 33:31Andy Greenwald?

  Even its creator, David Simon, did that.

• 33:33Chris Ryan?

  Even its creator, David Simon. The Lowdown really does feel novelistic for all, all the good reasons and even some of the reasons where it's like, sometimes I have a hard time settling down enough to read a novel. And I, there are times when I turn the Lowdown on and I'm like, oh, okay. Like, we are moving at a slower pace and we are moving at a different pace than, than like, most of my consumption is moving at, over the course of my, of my day, when I have my phone in my hand for 11 hours of it. And it takes a second to get, to get into the water, you know, and to like, let it wash over you. And this is a really good example, this episode four, which is called

• 34:17Chris Ryan?

  Short on Cowboys. It kind of starts three times, you know? It's got this sort of fantastical Tim Blake Nelson narration. It's got a, a kind of lazy, awesome 10 minute scene at a diner between a father, a daughter and a mother. And then it really gets going and you get like, basically a half hour short film about a tryst between Gene, Triple Horn's Betty Jo character and Ethan Hawke's Lee character.

• 34:48Andy Greenwald?

  We could call it Before Hangover.

• 34:50Chris Ryan?

  That's right, because they do drink more tequila than I think most people east of Tulsa can handle.

• 34:56Andy Greenwald?

  I, I felt quite ill, honestly, watching it. I felt concerned.

• 35:01Chris Ryan?

  What did you think of this episode? Where, how are you feeling about the show in general?

• 35:04Andy Greenwald?

  I want to talk specifically about this episode and also last week's, which we didn't really touch on, about the Beluga Brothers. But I want to say something broader. I wanted, I want to give my campaign speech here, which is to say, if you listen to this podcast, and if you've, and if you've listened to it for a while, Chances are you like television a certain way. It doesn't mean we all, we may not all agree. Unlike that brewery owner in Maine. Like, I'm just bringing people together here. We're one country. We may not agree on all of the shows that we love or what we want to see week to week on television. And I think there are people who are indulging our love of task and they think we only like it because we're from Philadelphia, which is only maybe 10% true. I actually think it's approaching like masterpiece status and we'll talk about

• 35:45Andy Greenwald?

  that on Monday. But I do think that one common thread that unites all of us is that we want television to be good and interesting and, for lack of a better word, brave. And brave could mean something like adolescence, which is both aesthetically brave and also, I think, creatively brave and certainly thematically brave. Or it could just mean purely aesthetically brave, like The Lowdown is. And so what I want to ask everyone in this great, big, beautiful country of ours is a simple thing. And I feel like we don't use this as a bully pulpit enough. I want all of you to watch The Lowdown. I want you to record it on your, download it from your Hulu app or put it on your TV or watch it on television. I don't even know what matters.

• 36:25Chris Ryan?

  Get a spanking new Maxell cassette, put it in the VHS.

• 36:28Andy Greenwald?

  Because this is what we are always talking about. It is, it is absolutely idiosyncratic. It is unique. It is funny. It is heartfelt. It is stakesy. It is exciting. It is surprising. It brings, it gives actors great opportunities to work and to bring joy. Like Kyle McLaughlin, Keith David, Tim Blake Nelson, Michael Hitchcock, like an all-star team of those guys doing elite work. Gene Triplehorn in this episode especially. Scott Shepard, just people who are friend of the pod Tracy Letts, just people willing to show up and work because they know that they're working with a creator in Sterling who's going to take care of them

• 37:10Andy Greenwald?

  and showcase them and give them stuff to do. And also, you know, I've been railing for years against the auteur theory of television, but I do think that Sterling Sterling Harjo is the kind of auteur that we need and that we want because there are elements in the show that, like you said, that kind of just don't make sense if you watch normie TV all the time. Like Tim Blake Nelson narrating from the afterlife and then sitting next to Ethan Hawke and his daughter and they both look at him. Or the way it becomes like double indemnity briefly when it's already been something else for a long time and then it cuts to, you know, like the, the security guard dudes doing a rap on YouTube in front of, in front of a car that's on fire. There are moments on the show where I'm like, oh yeah, I mean, obviously Sterling likes Twin Peaks. Like the moment

• 37:55Andy Greenwald?

  in episode four when Betty, what's her name? Betty, uh, she has a second name. That's

• 37:59Chris Ryan?

  Betty Jo.

• 38:00Andy Greenwald?

  Gene Triplehorn's character, Betty Jo, opens the door to the room where Tim Blake Nelson's character supposedly or probably killed himself. And I'm like, oh, this is a Twin Peaks moment. The way this room is lit, the way the sound design is.

• 38:10Chris Ryan?

  Do you know what else is a Twin Peaks moment? Ethan Hawke's character introducing himself as Agent Cooper in the third episode?

• 38:16Andy Greenwald?

  I was about to say that. Exactly. But also you can tell that Sterling loved Twin Peaks and he also loved Twin Peaks: The Return because Kyle is giving some Mr. C energy when he gets furious in this episode of this face. I say that not because it's cool that a guy who makes a TV show likes the same stuff that I do. I'm saying it because it's not fucking pastiche. This is a guy who knows how to make films, knows how to tell a story, lives in a place, knows things and is generous enough to share them with us and has been given a platform to just fucking leave it all out there. And I, like you were saying, I have no idea if it's succeeding or failing on commercial terms, but I think so far it is 100% succeeding on artistic terms. And sometimes we gotta show up and support that shit.

• 38:57Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And I, I think that the payoff for this show at the end of every episode that I have watched and I would imagine at the end of this season itself is going to be like that of finishing a great novel where you know, it's unlike anything else legal you can really do with your brain. It is really the most enriching, beautiful, three-dimensional experience and imaginative experience you can have. And this show feels different than weekly mystery box puzzle shows. Um, you know, and it's really lovely to have this and task on at the same time because I think it shows the huge spectrum of

• 39:39Chris Ryan?

  Not only enjoyment, but intellectual stimulation and emotional kind of fulfillment you can get from crime shows and from crime fiction. Because you're putting these characters, many of whom are pretty normal people, in broken situations and putting them in extraordinary circumstances and asking them to make these incredibly complex and consequential moral decisions about what to do next and what to do to fix things that have happened in the past, to fix things that will happen in the future. And they bring out really amazing performances. You talked about the incredible murderers row of supporting actors, but like, this is among Ethan Hawke's best performances.

• 40:20Andy Greenwald?

  I wanted to say that, too.

• 40:21Chris Ryan?

  And the reason why I think that is it is both a fucking movie star Paul Newman performance and it is also like a freak, like, used bookstore guy performance. And he's able to have both an incredibly cool, charismatic, attractive quality to him while also being the kind of guy you find flipping through records, you know, or through used books at a store in Tulsa. And it's kind of remarkable to watch him cook like on this level. I mean, obviously, you and I were fans of Good Little Bird. We've been fans of his work for such a long time, but this is such a Titanic undertaking. He has to do so much shit in every scene.

• 41:02Chris Ryan?

  He has to be a lover, he has to be a fighter, he has to be afraid, he has to be a convincing writer, and he has to be a comedian. And he does it all so well.

• 41:13Andy Greenwald?

  He's like, he's such an interesting performer and we've, we've loved him for a long time, but like, he never quite fits, right? Because he's a freak. Like, he's too weird and too obsessed with the little, like, you know, the, he's like, speaking of crime novels, like, there's always a scene, like, in a classic George Pelikanos novel where someone drops the cocaine and then they're like going through the carpet fibers. Like, that's how Ethan Hawke approaches a script. And often, movies that aren't directed by Richard Linklater don't know what to do with that. You know, like, it's, it's too much and it's also diffuse and yet he's handsome and charismatic and famous enough to lead a television show in the prestige era. Sterling knows how to work with him, which I think means to collaborate with him because

• 41:55Andy Greenwald?

  he, he fits the frame on the show in a way that suits everyone involved and it's really exciting to watch. Now- I'm not saying the show is perfect, which is one of the reasons why I like it. The third episode, and again, this might have been the jet lag talking, but the third episode is challenging. And I think it would be challenging for, again, for normies who are like, you know, want to pick up this, this flag and carry it for a little while. The setup is essentially that in order to pursue this reckless investigation of a potential suicide of the

• 42:25Chris Ryan?

  Brother of a gubernatorial candidate.

• 42:28Andy Greenwald?

  gubernatorial candidate, they must drive to Ethan Hawke's character, Lee, his daughter and his frenemy, Michael Hitchcock's character, who is a rival antique stealer, must drive to a lake somewhere outside of Tulsa in Oklahoma and somehow either woo or confuse or distract a scary or like aggressive Mexican-American antique stealer who has come into the possession of a box of the Dead Brothers Jim Thompson novels.

• 42:59Chris Ryan?

  Yes, which include letters that the guy has been writing or diary entries that the guy has been writing that will then help him elliptically piece together a massive conspiracy.

• 43:09Andy Greenwald?

  And if you think this sounds like, and I feel like it's okay to spoil it because I'm either convincing you or you've already seen it. If you think that sounds complicated, what if I told you that what actually happens is Michael Hitchcock's character just drinks whiskey and alone in a diner while the daughter meets the scary antique stealer and steals the books while Ethan Hawke steals a park ranger jacket and then gets enveloped in a violent backwards caviar theft, but also which it's also a love story about poetry.

• 43:39Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 43:40Andy Greenwald?

  Dude, that's fucking nuts. And I think that everyone involved is like, I guess John Landgraf was on set on Alien Earth that day when we greenlit this, you know what I mean? But God bless them for greenlighting it and in giving them the space to do this. It's, it's worth it when you have the chance to invest in something like this, both as a network and as a viewer.

• 44:00Chris Ryan?

  Usually with a mystery show like this, I think you and I would spend a fair amount of time talking about the narrative. I'm more here for Ethan Hawke walking down the street and someone asks him what his favorite Michael Curtiz movie is.

• 44:18Chris Ryan?

  And when when something like that is happening and the way that even making Blair films that and the way that they sound design it where it's kind of happening in an alt mini way, a conversation is happening as Ethan Hawke is walking by, but Ethan Hawke is being asked to weigh in on this debate between a used record store guy and his customer. And like, what's your favorite Michael Curtiz movie? He's like, what? What are you talking about? And he's just like, oh, I thought you were gonna say Boy from Oklahoma. He's like, no, Captain Blood. And it's just a second. But I'm like, I can't fucking believe this is happening. Like, you know, this is the dream of the 90s is back, you know?

• 44:57Andy Greenwald?

  Life goes on. Well, pavement's more popular than ever. Like, maybe, maybe we're coming, maybe these clothes we like are finally coming back into fashion, or at least are gum.

• 45:05Chris Ryan?

  The sort of recurring bit that this used record store proprietor has is that he is getting rid of loiterers, that there are all these people at this strip in Tulsa where Lee's bookstore and this record store and a diner and a law officer are that this guy is like, you know, somebody was loitering outside your store, so I told them no loitering. And this show, this show is loitering. This show is just fucking hanging out. And you may have to like, adjust your brain a little bit when you, when you do that, because I don't know that we hang out with television as much anymore, especially 55 minute mystery dramedies. We're more like, oh, yeah, I like to hang out with my sitcom buddies for 22

• 45:50Chris Ryan?

  minutes and then get the fuck out.

• 45:52Andy Greenwald?

  Or white knuckle it with my pals in the pit.

• 45:55Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 45:55Andy Greenwald?

  Like, I love these people, so it's worth it.

• 45:57Chris Ryan?

  I want an extremity of emotion. I don't want to have to think. I don't want to have to like feel. I don't want to have to pay attention. I want to be able to kind of either, this is like, I want a drug experience. I either want an upper or a downer.

• 46:10Andy Greenwald?

  It's also to go back to the novelistic example. It's okay to to to love disliking something like these really these emotions are closely related and like there are a lot of books like I talked about on the pod the other week like I had um because you you just the way that you casually just reveal things about yourself only on this podcast that you've read every Robert Stone novel and I was like excuse me I'm right here on the other end of this text thread so I went and I got this Robert Stone novel called Children of Light and I'm here to tell you as I told you over text it's awful yeah but I loved it yeah and I'm not saying the low down is awful I'm just saying it's cool to engage with art that

• 46:49Andy Greenwald?

  inflames you one way or the other and and my guess is and I don't have any anything to back this up I'd be curious if people would write to our email address or whatever and say I'm curious if there is a percentage of people who are like I love the low down one I'd love the low down two and I was out on low down three I'm curious about that and

• 47:07Chris Ryan?

  I think maybe it would be people who are like I've gotten to low down three and it's just too sleepy or it's too I I you know I maybe maybe they don't give a shit about Michael Curtis and Junior Kimbrough and they're just like watching people drink coffee for 11 minutes and read letters to each other is you know I've got I've got like a we've come on I gotta keep on a schedule here emotionally

• 47:29Andy Greenwald?

  As someone with a 12 year old who is recently very coffee curious I really felt seen by that

• 47:34Chris Ryan?

  So what do you do with that?

• 47:36Andy Greenwald?

  What she loves right now is decaf.

• 47:39Chris Ryan?

  Yeah, but there is a trace amount of caffeine in that, right?

• 47:42Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, and she likes matcha lattes. Those are really big with the kids. So I try to cut the I let that happen but usually like pre 1pm you know?

• 47:50Chris Ryan?

  I used to just drink the sweetest possible but the largest possible Dunkin' Donuts. So it would just be like French vanilla with French vanilla creamer and sugar.

• 48:01Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, the thing is

• 48:02Chris Ryan?

  Like I understand that they made the the coffee itself taste like French vanilla.

• 48:06Andy Greenwald?

  You add it extra. I want to be clear when I say that she likes coffee what she likes is a warm mug giant mug of milk with like some light decaf coffee flavoring.

• 48:15Chris Ryan?

  Yes.

• 48:16Andy Greenwald?

  Um, last thing, I feel like we've said our piece, but you mentioned Duffy Boudreau.

• 48:22Andy Greenwald?

  I won't spoil the end of four since we're kind of like getting, hopefully getting people to watch it, but there is a sequence, a violent sequence at the end of four that is very Barry core. It really reminded me of Barry and it's a mix of like the macabre and the intense and the outrageous and funny.

• 48:36Chris Ryan?

  That's a great shout. A much different animal is House of Guinness, which we haven't talked about. Came out a couple of weeks ago on Netflix. It's the new show from Stephen Knight, which I think I will sort of generally tar with this brush of it's Stephen Knight's succession. You know, effort. It's about.

• 48:58Andy Greenwald?

  Do you want to give background to Stephen Knight? Because he, when you say the new Stephen Knight show, there's often two a year.

• 49:03Chris Ryan?

  Seven of them. Yeah. Stephen Knight is one of the most prolific and successful TV creators that we have right now. He is essentially like England's answer to Taylor Sheridan in some ways. He frequently writes these rather muscular, historically minded, often period piece TV shows. I love him. He is the creator of Rogue Heroes, which is my favorite series by him. But obviously I also am very, very into Peaky Blinders and evidently so is everybody else because there is not only a Peaky Blinders movie, but a new Peaky Blinders spinoff series in the making that should arrive at some time, you know, in the next couple of years. And that is set in the aftermath of World War II, which is pretty exciting because Peaky

• 49:48Chris Ryan?

  Blinders is really good and it's an also really interesting historical time period. He also, like just last year, put out a show that I never got a chance to see because I don't think it came out here called This Town, which was about like the two-tone.

• 50:02Andy Greenwald?

  Oh yeah, that never did come out here officially. Yeah. But he also did a thousand blows, didn't he?

• 50:06Chris Ryan?

  Yeah. And a thousand blows. And he's prolific screenwriter in films, writing, you know, he was working on a Star Wars movie. He's, you know, just always, always, always writing. So House of Guinness is a show which I think you could be uncharitable and be like, oh, he saw Succession and was like, I can do that. And it is about the death of the patriarch of the Guinness family as I believe it's sort of in the early 20th century and the.

• 50:34Chris Ryan?

  Efforts of his children to keep his, his alcohol empire together as Guinness is sort of becoming a global brand and Ireland is, is facing a moment of revolution and also a temperance movement and also the kids themselves are at each other's throats.

• 50:53Andy Greenwald?

  And would you, would you, if you had the ability, would you travel back in time to the Guinness patriarch's deathbed and as he's passing whisper in his ear, a full explanation of dickheads splitting the G at the Devonshire, just on Instagram? Like, would you just let them know?

• 51:09Chris Ryan?

  See, I can tell you're getting like a little bit too crabby because like a year and a half ago, you were like, I can't wait to be a dickhead splitting the G.

• 51:17Andy Greenwald?

  Oh, we are the problem. Like, I think we're self-aware. I'm just saying, like, it's funny watching a show and maybe this is why Guinness allowed their trademark and their name to be in it because it is based on historical fact, but it's very salacious and, and, and out there. But like, they won. Like Guinness has never, ever, ever been trendier or more popular. So congratulations.

• 51:40Chris Ryan?

  So historically minded, but historically loose with tone, I would call this show. And I, I, you know, in Rogue Heroes, I enjoy the rock and roll approach to a World War II movie and kind of imagining The Dirty Dozen, but with the White Stripes playing in the background is essentially like how Rogue Heroes kind of presents things. The House of Guinness is really chaotic to start with. You know, there's a lot going on. You are introduced to about 15 to 16 people instantaneously and they are only on screen for like, you know, 10 seconds at a time.

• 52:24Andy Greenwald?

  And they're all beating the shit out of each other.

• 52:26Chris Ryan?

  And they're all beating the shit out of each other or doing drugs or drinking or having hangovers or they're related. And even though it's the early 20th century, the Fontaines DC are playing.

• 52:36Andy Greenwald?

  Many times, yeah, a lot of needle drops. But there's also a lot of like animations or animatics, like explaining things and saying like power, intrigue.

• 52:45Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:45Andy Greenwald?

  Also, this is the history of Ireland at this period.

• 52:48Chris Ryan?

  I.

• 52:48Andy Greenwald?

  It's a very noisy, noisy, noisy show.

• 52:51Chris Ryan?

  We were talking about whether or not like TV needs a better hype machine. And I almost wondered whether Stephen Knight backed into some weird thing, which it feels like you're watching the first episode especially, and I've watched two. And I think I will keep watching it because it is definitely the kind of thing that I like to throw on at 10:00 PM and just veg out and watch. But Stephen.

• 53:12Andy Greenwald?

  I find it very stressful, but go on.

• 53:14Chris Ryan?

  The first episode, though, is like a pitch deck for the show.

• 53:17Andy Greenwald?

  Yes, that's well said.

• 53:18Chris Ryan?

  And it almost feels like a proof of concept that he made for Netflix and Netflix was like, that's the first episode. And I maybe that maybe that works. Maybe that's a good idea.

• 53:28Andy Greenwald?

  I mean, it feels like an interesting collision between the rock and roll history sensibility that you're talking about, A, a kind of British television aesthetic that I want to ask you about, because I feel like you watch a lot more of this than I do generally, and Netflix's global domination strategy. Like, the way this show starts, it's clearly a Netflix show. It yells at you about what it is so quickly that you're almost like held captive by it. That didn't really work for me. I'll say that like Stephen Knight is a very clever writer and he's incredibly accomplished and just like in his bones knows how to build story almost out of anything, it seems like. He's like a savant.

• 54:13Andy Greenwald?

  And there's so many good actors in it, as there tend to be in Stephen Knight productions. Like Anthony Boyle, who is one of the best young actors.

• 54:21Chris Ryan?

  James Norton.

• 54:22Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. Working, that's James Norton, right? I knew I recognized him.

• 54:28Andy Greenwald?

  He, uh, we saw Anthony Boyle in, um, Say Nothing recently.

• 54:33Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:33Andy Greenwald?

  Completely different role.

• 54:34Chris Ryan?

  And the Lincoln, the Lincoln assassination show.

• 54:38Andy Greenwald?

  That's right.

• 54:38Chris Ryan?

  Booth.

• 54:39Andy Greenwald?

  And Louis Partridge is one of the stars and Louis Partridge is famous for, um, being the male boyfriend in the Enola Holmes movies, which get a lot of burn in my household.

• 54:48Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 54:48Andy Greenwald?

  And also dating Olivia Rodrigo.

• 54:50Chris Ryan?

  Just a steaming hot cup of decaf in an Enola Holmes movie? It sounds like a Saturday night.

• 54:54Andy Greenwald?

  Don't make me more homesick than I already am. Um, and then also like a couple of other fun things on the margins, like Jack Leeson, who famously retired from acting or took a step back from acting, um, after Game of Thrones.

• 55:06Chris Ryan?

  Uh huh.

• 55:06Andy Greenwald?

  Uh, returning to the screen in this in a fun way. I have no hate in my heart for this, but I have to say, like, there's a certain aesthetic and it's not so much the needle drops, although they're, they do feel really glib, especially when it's just like, things are about to get serious, lads. And then Fontaine's drops and they, people knock each other's teeth out. Like, it's like, what are the actuals? This is violence? Do you know what I mean? And after watching like two men grapple with their sins in task on Sunday nights, like it's sort of hard to see this kind of like savagery without any reflection whatsoever. But there's an aesthetic, and maybe this is the Stephen Knight rock and roll history aesthetic, but it, the show, it used to be like 20, 30 years ago, British imports like

• 55:49Andy Greenwald?

  BBC One original or things that ended up on Masterpiece Theater or Mystery, they all looked a certain way, whether it was the lighting or the camera, it just didn't look like American television.

• 55:57Chris Ryan?

  Now that's just a global television aesthetic.

• 55:59Andy Greenwald?

  But this is the particularly British flavor of it and it, and it, it's leached into shows that, um, we've loved. I think there was a little bit of it in Pursuit of, uh, oh God, I'm blank, Pursuit of Love, the Emily Mortimer series, which I adored, but there's also a ton of it in, um, you, you have better recall than I do and I'm jet lagged, but like other shows like this, Thousand Blows, for example, or other non Stephen Knight shows.

• 56:22Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 56:22Andy Greenwald?

  And it's, it's just.

• 56:23Chris Ryan?

  It doesn't honestly feel significantly different than Mobland. You know, like there is a.

• 56:28Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah. It's a, it's a certain recognizable aesthetic that I'm just not. It's serviceable and it works, but it does seem like a mass market export product right now, like Guinness itself. And I'm not vibing with it.

• 56:41Chris Ryan?

  So there is just something really interesting. I called it Succession, Stephen Knight's Succession, and there's obvious reasons for that because of the plot setup. But there is also a few quiet moments in the opening episodes of inter-family banter that I think doesn't necessarily reach Jesse Armstrong levels of like, symphonic put downs, but is kind of a different show. It's a different show than the one of, that seems to be taking place in the same sound stages that they shot Peaky Blinders, and is a lot of rock and roll while people are throwing Molotov cocktails around. The stuff that I'm here for is the family stuff. So

• 57:24Chris Ryan?

  I'll continue to check it out. But I'm glad you at least gave a look. And I do think that there's something to the universal British export aesthetic that we're arriving at.

• 57:35Andy Greenwald?

  Yeah, I mean, it's just, and maybe that's a more natural segue from the thing we're saying about the Lowdown, because certainly, a lot of the homogenization of global television, and global television made for Netflix is because of Netflix, and it's also because of an American aesthetic that has.

• 57:50Chris Ryan?

  Well, I mean, I think that the ultimate test is like, the Lowdown dares you to be bored. Like, they're like, you may think that this scene is going on too long, but this is actually how people talk. And House of Guinness is like, you will never get bored because this scene changes every 37 seconds.

• 58:07Andy Greenwald?

  The other thing that I think that differentiates, I mean, a lot of things differentiate the Lowdown from House of Guinness, I mean, the only thing that they have in common is, I think, alcohol. But the other thing about the Lowdown that feels really refreshing at this moment, is that it doesn't have to do anything.

• 58:21Chris Ryan?

  Right.

• 58:22Andy Greenwald?

  And so much of the way we talk about contemporary television is we talk about it in terms of, yes, sticking the landing, or answering the questions, or servicing X, Y, or Z thing. And it does become this weird, like, exam structure, where we're like, okay, well, what does Alien Earth have to do to keep us interested, or make us feel like it was worth it? What did Noah Hawley have to do to please the, like, the deep xenomorph heads like yourself, and then also bring in noobs? Like, that's a lot of have to's.

• 58:52Chris Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 58:52Andy Greenwald?

  And it's such a privilege to watch a show that absolutely didn't have to do anything, except just march to the beat of its own twangy drummer. Drummers aren't twanging.

• 59:01Chris Ryan?

  Let's wrap it up there.

• 59:02Andy Greenwald?

  Guitars are twanging.

• 59:04Chris Ryan?

  Thanks to Kai.

• 59:05Andy Greenwald?

  I'm fading, but I'm good. I'm good.

• 59:06Chris Ryan?

  And Kai, we'll be back on Monday. Greenwald will be with me to talk about task online. But like, we may have some extra stuff on Monday. So everybody have a great weekend. Enjoy task on Sunday night and we'll see you on Monday.

• 59:27Chris Ryan?

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