COSMIC COMEDY

One of the comic – and cos­mic – se­ries HBO has pinned its hopes on this year is Av­enue 5, the story of a lux­u­ri­ous space cruiser sud­denly cast into a des­per­ate sit­u­a­tion: due to a nav­i­ga­tion error, the two-week voy­age be­comes one that lasts three years.

The plot re­volves around Cap­tain Ryan Clark – played by British actor Hugh Lau­rie – at­tempt­ing to pre­vent mass hys­te­ria break­ing out among the pas­sen­gers. How­ever, his crew has an un­for­tu­nate ten­dency to make mat­ters worse rather than look for so­lu­tions.

The pilot of this Anglo-Amer­i­can sit­com re­ceived rave re­views when it first aired, so ex­pec­ta­tions are high. It was cre­ated by Ar­mando Ian­nucci, screen­writer and pro­ducer of an­other iconic HBO com­edy se­ries, Veep (a po­lit­i­cal satire that came to an end last year after seven sea­sons and nu­mer­ous Emmy Awards).

Lau­rie – who also ap­peared in­ter­mit­tently on Veep – has now left be­hind the much loved char­ac­ter of Doc­tor House, who turned him into a star in the United States, and re­turned to his comedic roots.

The cap­tain he plays is an el­e­gant, kind and charm­ing leader... until the prob­lems begin. Then we dis­cover that he is re­ally a fraud and his role a purely dec­o­ra­tive one, since the ship does not need a cap­tain.

Also in the Av­enue 5 cast is Josh Gad, who plays the bil­lion­aire owner of the space cruiser, a pedant who thinks he can change things out of willpower alone. It is a char­ac­ter some have likened to Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX ty­coon who is try­ing to make space tourism a re­al­ity.

In this se­ries, set in the not too dis­tant fu­ture, space tourism is al­ready well es­tab­lished, and the af­flu­ent classes can af­ford to spend a few weeks trav­el­ling around the solar sys­tem in a lux­u­ri­ous en­vi­ron­ment that in­cludes all the typ­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ties of a cruise ship: yoga classes, spa, gourmet buf­fets, ob­ser­va­tion plat­forms... How­ever, after a se­ri­ous error al­ters the ship’s tra­jec­tory, the trip be­comes any­thing but re­lax­ing and the plot is com­pli­cated by all man­ner of amaz­ing and hi­lar­i­ous twists. One ex­am­ple is when the pas­sen­gers have to use their own fae­ces to pro­tect them­selves from the ra­di­a­tion in space (which gives rise to a lot of jokes but is ac­tu­ally based on sci­ence).

Not quite so sci­en­tific is the scenery, the in­te­ri­ors of the Av­enue 5 being white, gold and round, with large win­dows that allow views of space.

Other sce­nar­ios in­volve the cus­tomer ser­vice man­ager fur­ther wor­ry­ing pas­sen­gers rather than re­as­sur­ing them, an al­co­holic as­tro­naut, clumsy en­gi­neers, and a whole host of angry pas­sen­gers. In the mean­time, Earth Com­mand seeks NASA sup­port for a res­cue mis­sion, with all sorts of non­sen­si­cal ideas to se­cure fund­ing to pay for it.

tv se­ries