Adir Miller is Israel’s best-loved stand-up comedian, and there has been much fanfare about Reset, his new series on Keshet 12, which debuted on Tuesday night, so I went into it with high expectations but left disappointed.
Miller has had two previous hit comic series, Ramzor (aka Stoplight), about three buddies at various stages of maturity, and Miller’s Crossing, in which he played a version of himself. Now that he’s in his 50s, he’s made a series about a guy in his 50s, and his biggest fans will probably enjoy this one as much as his previous sitcoms, but those who aren’t into his stand-up humor will want to give this a pass.
In Reset, he plays Gidi, an underappreciated army intelligence officer who discovers that middle age brings with it a slew of narcissistic insults. His younger colleagues barely listen to him and his boss is obsessed with him tucking in his shirt; his wife (Miri Mesika) doesn’t want to have sex anymore but does want to talk about their more mundane problems in pointless couples therapy; his aspiring influencer daughter only speaks to him when she wants money or a ride; his father is in a coma; and his doctor wants him to have a colonoscopy – what more could go wrong? Well, his doctor tells him that he doesn’t need a colonoscopy after all, because it turns out he has only a few weeks to live.
This brings his simmering midlife crisis front and center, and he tells off everyone and lashes out in various ways, borrows money to buy a sports car, and heads off to the airport to go to Thailand, when he gets a call saying it was all a mistake, he’s fine (this isn’t a spoiler, Miller has talked about it in all the interviews about the show). To say he has burned his bridges is an understatement. I am curious as to where the show goes from there, but given all the bathroom humor and glib one-liners in the first episode, I’m not optimistic.
Reset reminded me in many ways of a movie from a decade ago, Mr. Predictable (Yeled Tov Yerushalayim in Hebrew), starring Amos Tamam of Srugim as an unhappy middle-aged man with a job he hates, a wife who is cheating on him, and a spoiled kid, who got the same devastating news that turned out to be false, although it took a little longer. That movie was about how the misdiagnosis led the hero to fall in love with a woman he would have overlooked otherwise, and although it was formulaic, it was touching. It’s hard to imagine Miller going from his first episode to something touching or fresh, but we’ll have to wait and see.
With everything that is available on HBO Max, I have found myself re-watching The Wire, and, like a great novel, it deepens with each viewing. But it wasn’t the only great series that David Simon, a former newspaper reporter, created, and you can see most of his other work on the service.
Show Me a Hero
The 2015 series, Show Me a Hero, wasn’t as celebrated as The Wire but is still fascinating. It takes a subject that doesn’t sound that interesting – the desegregation of Yonkers, New York, through court-mandated building of low-income public housing in the late 1980s – and makes it compelling. The title refers to a quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.”
It’s based on a non-fiction book by Lisa Belkin, and the hero here is Nick Wasicsko (Oscar Isaac, who starred in the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis), a 28-year-old Yonkers city councilman who becomes mayor as a controversy is raging over court-ordered public housing in the racially mixed city. It’s clear that the former mayor, Angelo Martinelli (James Belushi), knows exactly what he is doing when he doesn’t fight hard to stay in office.
Any mayor of the city will have to comply with the court order, or the city will be found in contempt and will lose its bond rating. This means that whoever is in office when the housing is built will alienate white, middle-class voters and have to deal with integrating the minority residents into new communities.
Nick, who lacks confidence but tries to present himself as a consummate politician, doesn’t anticipate what the fight will take out of him. He loves listening to Bruce Springsteen’s music to get himself in a fighting mood, and he is the kind of man “the Boss” would have written songs about. Isaac is brilliant in the role, showing the politician’s vanity but also making us care about him. There is a great supporting cast that includes Bob Balaban, Jon Bernthal, Catherine Keener, Alfred Molina, Peter Riegert, and Winona Ryder, who was just at the beginning of her very welcome comeback.
Since we lost Matti Caspi, one of Israel’s greatest musicians, this week, many radio stations have been playing a lot of classic Israeli music, and it might put you in the mood for a new documentary about David Broza, also an amazing musician. It’s called The Spanish Connection: David Broza, and it will be shown February 15 at 9:15 p.m. on Hot 8, and will also be available on Hot VOD and Next TV.
It focuses on Broza’s deep connections to Spanish music and culture, and through interviews and archival footage, tells the story of how his family suddenly moved to Spain when he was 11. Although he was upset about the move at first, he fell in love with the music he heard there. Spanish guitar music has had a huge influence on him, and he has translated many Spanish songs to Hebrew. The filmed performances are beautiful. The documentary was directed by Avida Livni, who has made several acclaimed documentaries about music, including A Standard Love Song: Arik Einstein.