TV has not tended to be an auteur’s medium. Perhaps it’s the vast scope of some of these projects (Law & Order, for example, would take almost two weeks, without sleep, to watch in its entirety) or possibly it’s the collaborative nature of the form. Maybe, even, it’s the strictures of the schedule, requiring each show to find a mainstream audience. Whatever the reason, there are very few auteurs in the world of TV. David Chase, Matt Groening, the late, great David Lynch, and, in that elite roster, Amy Sherman-Palladino, who, alongside husband Daniel Palladino, has one of the most distinct voices in broadcast arts. It returns this week, with Étoile.
Jack (Luke Kirby) runs the ballet in New York, whilst Geneviève (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is “interim” director of its Parisian equivalent. Both organisations are struggling: in New York, they are haemorrhaging money (not least via $100 champagne flutes that disappear in old ladies’ handbags) while in Paris the dancers are, predictably, threatening to go on strike. And so, a cultural swap programme is suggested, sending American talent to France and French creatives to the US. Tempestuous prima ballerina Cheyenne (Lou de Laâge) heads stateside, much to the chagrin of the French ministry of culture, while eccentric choreographer Tobias (Gideon Glick) finds himself l’étranger in a strange land. “A generation of young people was lost,” Geneviève laments, of the post-Covid landscape. “The pipeline is closed.” But could this exchange initiative breathe new life into two dying institutions?
Sherman-Palladino will be most familiar to audiences from her two long-running shows, Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. Both reimagine screwball comedy for a modern audience, with frenetically paced dialogue and plots that meander through the range of human experience. Étoile is of a piece with them (and the Palladinos’ middle project, Bunheads, which was set in a ballet school). Kirby spars gamely with the trademark ratatat delivery he perfected as Lenny Bruce in Mrs Maisel – with former lover Geneviève, with the dancers in his company, and, above all, with Simon Callow’s sinister oligarch Crispin, who is funding the initiative. But Jack is troubled, too, by the lack of control he can exert on his situation. “You’re a fantasy, Jack,” Crispin warns the suave executive director. “You don’t exist.”
This is a promising set-up, and yet Étoile is a little hard to love. The Palladinos’ great heroines – Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, Midge Maisel – were all selfish, flawed but hugely likeable. Étoile has a likeability problem. Cheyenne is a rocket (“I want to fight,” she insists to a group of eco-warriors, “I want something to matter”) but De Laâge’s delivery comes across, in English, as monotone fury. Gainsbourg, in a role for which Call My Agent!’s Camille Cottin was initially cast, also struggles with the nimbleness of the comedy. They grow into the roles, bringing increased nuance, but viewers may not give them the necessary time. There is so much going on in Étoile (the recalcitrant daughter returning to France, the chauvinist dancer desperate for his shot at the big time, the family legacy being unravelled by corporate interference) that, at times, it might be better served played at a slower tempo, with more focus on the humanity.
When it has room to breathe, Étoile can be quite beautiful. Amazon Prime has afforded the project the budget required to mount this on a vast and beautiful stage. The ballet sequences are exquisite, and the interposition of actors into the dance performances, seamless. The two Brits in the core cast, Callow and, particularly, David Haig as boisterous maestro Nicholas, have great fun, and fans of Gilmore Girls (of which there are many) will enjoy the familiar faces making guest and cameo appearances (Kelly Bishop, Yanic Truesdale, Dakin Matthews and others). More familiar still is the rhythm of the dialogue – what my partner calls the patented Sherman-Palladino Repetition Formula – which zips from participant to participant like an intense tennis rally. At its best, it’s the equal of anything on television today.
It might be that Étoile struggles to get off the ground. Ballet, after all, requires both the weightless beauty of the ballerina and, also, the raw power of the danseur to give it lift. Does a talky comedy-drama about ballet politics have enough oomph to capture a general audience? Hopefully, it does. Because even though it might prove a slow burn and require more patience than viewers usually expend, if there’s anyone who can stick the landing, it’s Amy Sherman-Palladino.
