Two new seriously funny TV shows: American Vandal and SMILF

Last year, I watched American gymnast Simone Biles in action at the Rio Olympics with bated breath. Her signature move of double layout with a half-twist and blind landing left me speechless. The same awestruck feeling washed over me when I binge-watched the Nextflix mockumentary series American Vandal.

The series is ostensibly about the aftermath of a high school prank in California's Oceanside that left 27 faculty cars spray-painted with images of male genitalia. Creators Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda came up with a script with backflips so exquisite they could do Biles proud. Dylan Maxwell (Jimmy Tatro), a serial prankster, is expelled from the school based on his reputation, despite his repeated pleas of innocence.

Determined to get to the bottom of this mystery, his classmates Peter Maldonado (Tyler Alvarez) and Sam Ecklund (Griffin Gluck) make a documentary with everyone, from the school's janitor to the vice-principal, forming a roster of talking heads who deliver boatloads of chuckles. What follows is a nippy black comedy on America’s Snapchat and Instagram age. Maldonado and Ecklund try to reverse-engineer the whole crime and start pulling at tiny threads to weave a fabric that turns out to be as complex and multi-faceted as a Persian carpet. It’s The Blair Witch Project meets American Pie on CSI table, a conflation the mere thought of which is giving me gooseflesh.

Everyone comes under the scanner — jocks, nerds, popular girls, motormouth teachers. Under a deadpan veneer, the tangents that this devilishly witty show takes are outstanding. The gags are wide-ranging and cover the whole gamut: from testicular follicles to Kiefer Sutherland's voice. Let's face it, America no longer does the whodunits well — that mantle has been taken by Scandinavian TV shows, which are doing more than just a good job.

And that's why the “spinal tap” treatment given to Serial and Making a Murderer makes American Vandal easily the smartest TV series of the year. Tatro is the beating heart of the show, his insouciance touching even as his life lies tattered. His gruff voice and alpha-male mannerisms make him America's most adorable guy with arrested development.

The series came out at a time when it became an open secret that influential men in the American entertainment industry just can't “keep it zipped up”. The show's howlingly funny take on the phallus is a metaphorical thumbing of the nose against the toxic humans who think they can always have their wicked way with their underlings.

A still from SMILF

The best part about the series is that it doesn't have a closure and has an ending straight out of Memories of Murder. And that pained me even more when I heard that a second season is coming out next year. American studios should know when to stop milking a brilliant series. There's no way the writers can top this internal conceit.

Only three episodes of SMILF, the new Showtime series that can be watched on Amazon, are out, but I am already enamoured by it. Creator Frankie Shaw is the eponymous character who is trying to make a living in Boston, while raising her toddler and feeling as sexual as a frying pan. She wants to make it big as an actress but is currently home tutoring rich kids. There are beautiful asides on the Trump presidency (“this country is a giant strip mall”) and a cracking scene where she pleasures herself to the bikini-clad girlfriend of her ex.

I expect funnier things in future episodes. Shaw should be commended for setting her series in Massachusetts instead of going to Brooklyn, just like Donald Glover did with Atlanta. An ad director even cribs in a scene that he can't wait to move to New York.

Lately, I have been savouring The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick and anyone who cares about 20th-century Western literature should devour this book. Watching Boston in SMILF reminded me of what the inimitable co-founder of The New York Review of Books wrote about this amazing city back in the day: “Boston is not a small New York, as they say a child is not a small adult but is, rather, a specially organised small creature with its small-creature’s temperature, balance and distribution of fat."

jagannath.jamma@bsmail.in