Armando Iannucci is known for his bitingly satirical comedies, savagely taking down politicians in such shows as The Thick of It and Veep, and in films like In the Loop and The Death of Stalin. But it’s difficult to tell what if any satirical target he’s aiming at in his limp new HBO series Avenue 5, a comedy set 40 years in the future aboard a fancy luxury space cruiser that experiences a series of disasters. The ship is full of terrible, self-centered people on power trips, so in that sense Avenue 5 isn’t much different from Veep.
It was easier to invest in and laugh at Veep‘s terrible people when they were making a point about the ineffectiveness of government, though. In contrast, the petty squabbling aboard the luxury liner Avenue 5 just feels irritating and pointless. Theoretically, the politicians satirized in Iannucci’s other work are supposed to be making policies for the good of their country. The characters on Avenue 5 are mostly just rich idiots on vacation who find themselves inconvenienced when a mechanical malfunction knocks the ship off course, turning a planned eight-week journey into a potentially three-year-long odyssey.
There are a couple of semi-competent people on the crew, starting with the ship’s captain, Ryan Clark (Hugh Laurie), who’s well-meaning but not exactly an effective leader. The only person who really knows what to do is lead engineer Billie McEvoy (Lenora Crichlow), who’s the only truly likable person on the show. This also makes her a mostly dull voice of reason, in contrast to all the bloviating idiots around her. Those idiots include Herman Judd (Josh Gad), the moronic billionaire owner of the cruise company (whose presence on the ship is never really explained), high-strung customer-relations representative Matt Spencer (Zach Woods, doing a variation on his Silicon Valley character) and various irate passengers.
The show also periodically cuts to the company’s employees back on Earth — led by short-tempered mission leader Rav Mulcair (Nikki Amuka-Bird) — who are frantically looking for a way to get the ship back home safely and quickly without spending too much money or further tarnishing the company’s image. Although there are a few pointed background details about the world of the future (Google has gone out of business, the moon is now a prison, there was some sort of horrible famine in France), Iannucci doesn’t seem to be interested in social commentary here.
As sci-fi goes, the world-building is pretty minimal, and any scientific-sounding elements are used mainly in service of easy humor (the ship is covered in a literal layer of human feces to protect it from cosmic radiation). Although Star Trek: Voyager‘s Ethan Phillips has a supporting role as a past-his-prime astronaut who offers unsolicited advice (and was mainly hired to entertain kids on the cruise), Avenue 5 also isn’t a satire of any well-known sci-fi franchise. This isn’t Galaxy Quest mocking the conventions of Star Trek, or even The Orville adding lowbrow humor to more carefully considered science fiction.
The closest comparison is Paul Feig’s little-seen Yahoo! Screen show Other Space, which was also about a starship crew stranded in space. However, that show had a much sharper sense of humor, mixing surreal elements with character comedy. Other Space‘s Neil Casey has a small role in Avenue 5 as an engineer, which mostly just serves as a reminder of how much more creative the other show was. Even fans of Iannucci’s penchant for florid swearing will be disappointed, as there are minimal F-bombs dropped in the four episodes available for review and none of the kind of elaborate insults that were essential elements of the dialogue on Veep.
Instead, the show relies a lot more on the serialized plot, which goes through a few ridiculous twists in the first four episodes, stretching believability even within the context of the show’s sci-fi set up. Laurie, whose captain at first seems like a dull straight arrow, benefits the most from the various swerves in the narrative, and by the fourth episode he has a lot more comedic notes to hit, which he does with expert timing. Gad recycles the entitled-buffoon performance he’s given numerous times before, and Woods plays up his character’s amusing desperation.
Among the passengers, Kyle Bornheimer and Jessica St. Clair are far too effective at playing a bickering married couple hated by everyone they encounter, and Rebecca Front creates one of the most unpleasant characters on TV in her loud, obnoxious passenger advocate Karen Kelly. Karen is clearly meant to represent the stereotype of a pushy middle-aged white woman, complete with her meme-referencing “talk to the manager” haircut. But instead of making a point about presumptuous rich people, she’s just a shrieking annoyance.
Karen is annoying on purpose, of course, and most of the characters on Avenue 5 aren’t meant to be likable or pleasant. The problem is that they aren’t fascinating or funny either, and the show is remarkably low on laughs, belaboring most of its feeble running jokes. Being trapped in space with these people for three years seems like it would be sheer torture, and spending half an hour a week with them on TV isn’t really much better.
Starring Hugh Laurie, Josh Gad, Lenora Crichlow, Zach Woods, Suzy Nakamura, Ethan Phillips, Nikki Amuka-Bird and Rebecca Front, Avenue 5 premieres Sunday, Jan. 19, at 10 p.m. ET/PT on HBO.
