The final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is available on Amazon Prime Video now and if the first two episodes are any indication, the series is as good as ever.
It's a fantasy, a musical comedy in saturated Technicolor™ hues, but one that makes a considerable effort to capture the look and feel of its 1950s - 60s setting. This season has (in opening segments) wandered farther ahead in time and maintained a look appropriate to the times. The dialog is sparkling and the storytelling remains sharp.
There's a lot of "period" technology in the background of Midge Maisel's stage, radio and TV work, and the props have been an honest effort, steadily improving. (This is squarely in an area of interest to me and it's an effort sometimes to not go looking up model numbers for an old TV camera or reel-to-reel.) It reminds me of AMC's Remember WENN, set in a radio station in 1940 - 42: the scripts were always good and the sets and props caught up as the show progress. But while WENN is a lost gem, Mrs. Maisel is a jewel in Amazon's crown and they know it.
It's not incisive social commentary -- but it's not lightweight fluff, either. That's a difficult balance to maintain and yet the series has consistently managed. Tam and I are watching the series a little at a time.
Update
4 days ago
3 comments:
My wife and I have thoroughly enjoyed that series. She will be thrilled to know there are new episodes to watch. We looked the other night and it was still showing the last episode of season 3.
Are you OK, MS X?
Joe: after a week-plus of back trouble and a pretty awful reaction to medicine for it (that was supposed to be a vacation!) followed by a short week of gadgets being badly messed-up at work, I'm okay but busy. I had to critique about 15,000 words of other people's fiction in two days of spare time before 9:00 a.m. Saturday: one literary short story, part of a screenplay and two multi-chapter sections of novels. So I have been a little busy.
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