6 Best TV Shows Similar to Manuel de la vie sauvage
The Sympathizer
"All wars are fought twice. The first on the battlefield. The second time in memory." This line, emblazed in Vietnamese and English in the opening moments of The Sympathizer, is taken right from Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen's bestselling novel of the same name. Fittingly, it also serves as the thesis statement for Max's adaptation of the sprawling work, a fleet-of-foot miniseries that explores the malleability of identity and perception through the lens of the Vietnam War, and the dynamic lenses through which our lives and conflicts can be viewed. That duality is encapsulated in the titular character, a French-Vietnamese biracial protagonist known only as The Captain (Hoa Xuande). From his childhood in Vietnam, he was always ostracized for being neither white nor Asian enough; his only solace came from his two friends, Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan) and Man (Duy Nguyen), who instead frame his heritage as being "twice of everything." Cut to Vietnam in the '70s, in the days leading up to the Fall of Saigon: He works for the Vietnamese Secret Police, interrogating Viet Cong prisoners at the behest of his arrogant martinet of a boss, The General (Toan Le). But he's also a communist mole, feeding information back to Man, who's now his North Vietnamese Army handler, and his daily life is a struggle to reconcile all of these varying identities. That struggle is further compounded after the Fall of Saigon (an escape attempt rendered in the first episode as an exciting, terrifying barrage of booming explosions and a foot race to a fleeing cargo plane). The Captain and Bon make it to America, though not without some heartbreaking losses for the latter; now, the two are alone, the Captain still required to report on the General's activities while laying low for both his CIA handlers and the LA cultural figures who treat him as an object of curiosity. Continue Reading →
RIPLEY
Tom Ripley doesn't exist. Not just in the sense that he's a fictional creation of thriller novelist extraordinaire Patricia Highsmith, no; as a man, Ripley is a chimera, a shadow, a formless void that hungrily sucks in whatever nourishment it can from whatever or whoever is around him. Damn the consequences. He's one of literature's (and, in the case of several cinematic adaptations, moviedom's) greatest conmen, a remora with nothing behind the eyes except the next game, the next mark, the next place to flee when suspicions run too high. Now, writer/director/showrunner Steven Zaillian has adapted the first of Highsmith's novels into an eight-episode miniseries for Netflix (it was originally slated for Showtime before they sold it), and by virtue of those pedigrees, it's maybe the best original series the streamer has put out all year. When we first meet Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott), he's a low-level grifter eking out a living with some street-level mail fraud in New York City. But one day, a private dick (Bokeem Woodbine) taps him on the shoulder and hauls him in front of a wealthy shipping magnate (filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan) for a special mission: travel to Italy on his dime to find his layabout painter-wannabe son Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) and bring him back home to fulfill his business responsibilities. Ripley doesn't know the man, but he agrees -- the chance to start all over somewhere else (and be bankrolled for it) is too great. So he swans off to Atrani, a small beachside villa where he ingratiates himself to the pampered Dickie and his writer girlfriend, Marge (Dakota Fanning), two people as insulated by their wealth as they are by their respective artistic mediocrities. RIPLEY. (L to R) Dakota Fanning as Marge Sherwood and Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf in RIPLEY. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2024 Unlike previous adaptations of the material, Zaillian barely (if ever) clues us into any kind of deeper humanity lurking under the surface for Tom Ripley. Matt Damon's version from The Talented Mr. Ripley was motivated by emotional impulse; here, Scott plays him like a reptile. There's something downright alien about his cold tilt of the head, those shark-like eyes (aided by Robert Elswit's chiaroscuro photography, which we'll get to later), the way his delivery teeters between blase deference and a flat, manipulative affect. He seems less like a desperate hanger-on than a predator, one all too happy to take rich people for everything they've got and discard them when he's sucked all the meat off their bones. He doesn't covet the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and even the script's frequent allusions to Ripley's subtextual lust for Dickie don't seem to fully account for his motivations. Continue Reading →
Palm Royale
There’s something undeniably inspired about casting Kristin Wiig as Maxine Simmons in Palm Royale. A social climber attempting to ingratiate herself into late 60s Palm Beach high society, Simmons shares with Wiig a certain constant desire to change herself. The actor's years at Saturday Night Live and subsequent film roles have established her as a chameleonic performer. She has enough versatility to play everyone from the painfully grounded to live-action cartoon characters. In this case, Wiig pours that talent into a woman trying desperately to be a different version of herself. As a kind of middle-aged conservative version of Tom Ripley, Wiig does indeed excel. The actor invests a mix of brute force cunning and barely hidden desperation in Simmons. That makes the would-be social maven compelling and repulsive in equal measure. Her machinations are too intriguing to ignore, but her very presence can be almost unendurable, especially for viewers with an overactive sense of vicarious embarrassment. Kristen Wiig and Allison Janney try to hash it out. (AppleTV+) The show also adds an interesting layer to her performance of wealth and class. Simmons’ claims often sound outlandish, the scrambling lies of someone trying to stay one step ahead of being exposed. However, Palm Royale slowly confirms a great many of them. Unlike Ripley or Saltburn’s Oliver Quick, she’s not a total fabrication. She has the credentials for the inner circle, but can’t stomach the time it takes. Continue Reading →
All the Light We Cannot See
Early in For All Mankind Season 4, Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman) and Dani Poole (Krys Marshall) reencounter each other for the first time in years on the Happy Valley Mars base. Smiling warmly, each says, “Hi, Bob,” to each other. For fans of the show, it has an immediate impact. The significance of the silly greeting reminds those audience members of the deep bond between these two astronauts. Newcomers likely won’t grasp the specifics of the importance, but Marshall and Kinnaman’s performances make it quite clear that it isn’t some random bit of silliness. Continue Reading →
The Wheel of Time
Big-budget fantasy lovers have reason to celebrate this week with Amazon Studio’s The Wheel of Time Season 2's debut. With some careful tweaking by Showrunner Rafe Judkins, Robert Jordan’s epic fantasy of feminine magic and quests of destiny came to life in an impressive if uneven first season. Now, the stakes are higher, the dangers subtler, and the ever-expanding cast of characters more compelling. Continue Reading →