Jason Schwartzman burst onto the pop-cultural stage a decade ago as Rushmore’s epically ambitious and un-hip Max Fischer. He returns in HBO’s Bored To Death as Fischer’s polar antithesis, Jonathan Ames, a Brooklyn hipster novelist/magazine freelancer with writer’s block. Jonathan can’t even emerge from his existential malaise long enough to put up a decent defence when his girlfriend leaves him because he consumes too much white wine and pot.
If Ames’ name rings a bell, that’s because it’s shared with the show’s creator Jonathan Ames, a Brooklyn hipster novelist/magazine freelancer who based it loosely on his own life (making Bored a perfect kinda-autobiographical companion piece to HBO’s returning Curb Your Enthusiasm). Ames originally planned to play himself but handed the role to Schwartzman, who effortlessly inhabits his listless persona.
Bored to Death is much more than another tale of slacker ennui. Just as Flight of the Conchords adds the concept of a whimsical musical into its comedy soup, so Bored is a delightfully bone-dry film-noir mash-up. A few years back, the reclusive Ames (the real one) considered putting an ad on craigslist as an unlicensed private detective. Instead, he wrote a short story about doing it.
In this television adaptation of that McSweeney’s piece, Ames (the fictional one) does advertise his amateur P.I. services online, but from there the show takes a stylized detour into the sublime. With directorial assistance from Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig, Bored to Death traffics in knowing noir imagery and rat-a-tat gumshoe dialogue as Ames haplessly attempts to solve cases with little detective knowledge beyond what he’s gleaned from his dog-eared
Raymond Chandler novels.
Schwartzman is ably backed by comedian Zach Galifianakis — the hirsute scene-stealer in this summer’s smash The Hangover — as Ames’ comic-book artist best bud Ray (based on Ames’ real-life best bud Dean Haspiel, who illustrated his acclaimed graphic novel The Alcoholic). Ted Danson continues his late-career TV resurgence as the editor at a Vanity Fair-esque magazine — an outrageous, thrice-divorced bachelor who enjoys Ames’ youthful company and his weed.
Bored to Death is set in an indie fantasia where Manhattan is a den of sin, herpes and colonics while Brooklyn’s a utopia of bicycles, brownstones and Bugaboo strollers. The production itself posits that the subculture has grown big enough to supply both a supporting cast (Parker Posey, essayist Sarah Vowell, SNL’s Kirsten Wiig, comic Patton Oswalt, The Daily Show’s John Hodgman) and an audience hip enough to appreciate Jim Jarmusch cameos and TV on the Radio on the soundtrack. But mostly, Bored is the fall season’s bar-none best comedy because of its off-kilter worldview and Schwartzman’s hilariously soft-boiled detective.
Bored to Death airs Sundays, 9:30pm on HBO Canada.