The Franchise Review: Biting HBO Comedy Asks Where It All Went Wrong for Superhero Movies
The people behind Veep, Succession, and two Bond films go behind the scenes on a fictional MCU.
Are they killing cinema? That’s what new recruit Dag (Lolly Adefope) wants to know on her first day on the set of superhero movie Tecto, a mid-range cog in Maximum Studios’ vast multi-phase machine. Is this a dream factory, or is it an abattoir?
It’s both, says The Franchise, so mind you don’t slip on all that blood and pig carcass while weaving those dreams. Created by Armando Iannucci (Veep, The Death of Stalin), Sam Mendes (Skyfall, Spectre) and Jon Brown (Succession, Dead Pixels), this eight-episode series is a comedy roast of franchise moviemaking. And because the best roasts come from close friends, it’s also partly a love letter to the same, as well as a howling cry for help.
It’s all fucked, is the short version. The pure instinct to telling fantastic stories on screen has been buried under geological layers of studio politics, creative burnout, breakdowns, dick-swinging contests and product placement requirements (“Let’s sell some milk!” shouts studio bigwig Pat in episode five, adding a last-minute scene to appease Chinese sponsors). Milk isn’t the half of it.
Tecto suffers due to its middling position in a teetering stack of other productions (coincidentally, the same studio’s also making Jenga: The Movie). The bosses are continually robbing Peter to pay Paul and making last-minute in-world decisions that send shockwaves through this ‘everything is connected’ universe. An alien genocide two movies down the line means Tecto loses a whole raft of characters. (“The fish people are carrying a lot of thematic luggage.”) The movie’s shortchanged when a planned cameo by the franchise star is swapped for one by a Z-lister. Major changes to comic book canon are made to appease online accusations of misogyny, leading to fan rage and death threats.
All that’s before we come onto dwindling box office, hostile crew, neurotic talent, ambulance-chasing press, VFX artists going postal, and Martin Scorsese issuing edicts that movies like Tecto are destroying moviemaking, while everybody involved is just trying to get through their 27-hour day and complete the paperwork on their divorce.
Bearing the brunt of the madness is Daniel (Himesh Patel), Tecto’s first assistant director, and a man with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Maximum Studios comics. Dan loves these stories and this is his dream job, if only it weren’t ruining his life. Producer Anita (Aya Cash) turned down Sofia Coppola to take that sweet Tecto paycheck, while European director Eric (Daniel Brühl) has ambitions of redefining cinema and becoming the next Christopher Nolan, but has to contend with his own severe limitations, plus those of a story involving an invisible jack hammer and a council of men made out of moss.
And then there’s the talent. Billy Magnussen is great as square-jawed lead Adam, number one on the call sheet but number two at everything else. Vulnerable, naïve and quite possibly morphing into a sheep due to the ovine growth hormones he’s on to pump up that Maximum Studios bod, there’s a whole flock of neuroses under that supersuit. Richard E Grant plays old thesp Peter – think Withnail if the acting career had taken off, leading him to the London stage and several 1980s buddy movies of questionable racial sensitivity. Cruel, venal and diva-ish, Grant is perfect.
Jessica Hynes is a comedic highlight as a horny script supervisor Steph, a kind of Gary to Eric’s Veep. The same goes for Adefope as Dag, the sarcastic voice of reason. Brühl is excellent as Eric… I could go on but to save us all time: it’s a comedy ensemble brought together by Armando Iannucci, the bringer-together of the best comedy ensembles since Christopher Guest. They’re all operating exactly as you’d want.
Comedically, it’s sharp, fast-paced and funny. Showrunner Jon Brown and co.’s attention to detail is spot-on, and there are very few gaps left empty where a gag might go. (Look out for the fictional superhero movie posters decorating the production office walls. My fave? “Plethora: Beyond the Nadir”, but “Toothcomb” is also 10/10.) I laughed more at a single scene involving a tractor in this than I’ve laughed at entire seasons of several other new comedies put together.
It’s weaker when it comes to the narrative beyond the jokes, and doesn’t quite succeed in making you invest in the characters or their plights. Compare it to, say, Call My Agent, which offers a more gently satirical but similarly cinephiliac look behind the scenes of moviemaking, and it doesn’t hold up as well dramatically. The Franchise’s characters are there in service of the gags rather than there in their own right. That’s no problem for a comedy, but it doesn’t bode well for the show’s longevity. By the end of these half-hour episodes, it feels as though it might have said everything it came to say.
Perhaps not though. By the end of season one, Tecto still has to be finished, released, reviewed, and taken to Comic-Con and out on the press circuit (the fake interviews playing over the closing credits are already a treat). There are certainly grounds for more, because it doesn’t take a subscription to the trades to see that this particular dream factory is only getting more abattoir-like by the day.
The Franchise airs on Sundays on HBO and will be available on Sky and NOW from 21st October. The first three episodes will air on the 21st with new episodes released weekly. Learn more about Den of Geek’s review process and why you can trust our recommendations here.
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Louisa Mellor is the Den of Geek UK TV Editor. She has written about TV, film and books for Den of Geek since 2010, and for…