Kvvetching on 'Curb,' Capote's crisis, and Alaskan escapism

Larry David, the king of crank, is back with a new, and what has been billed as the final, season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is now available in Israel on Cellcom TV, Hot, and Yes. As in all previous seasons, he just can’t let anything go and he tosses off insults in all the languages he knows, which are English and Yiddish. 

Season 12 opens with Larry still involved in a show about his childhood, Young Larry, that has made a star out of the awesomely awful actress, Maria Sofia (Keyla Monterroso Mejia). He is living with the annoying city councilwoman Irma (Tracy Ullman) and counting down the days until he can break up with her. To make the time go by faster and to earn some cash he agrees to attend a party thrown in Atlanta by a fan of Young Larry, which means he has to travel with Maria and Leon (J.B. Smoove, whom David graciously allows to utter some of the best lines, most of which are unprintable in a family newspaper). Susie Essman, thankfully, returns as his manager’s wife, Susie Greene. You can pretty much imagine the trouble Larry gets into at the party, where he is given the impossible mission of just being “cordial.” Comic high points include Larry shouting at Siri and an exchange with Leon, where he suggests they visit the Congo and Tel Aviv to see who would have harder time fitting in. Larry would certainly find much to kvetch about in Israel, and I can just see him sitting in one of those “parliaments” of geezers at a table in a café or a park bench here. But maybe because it’s the final season, there are signs that Larry is starting to take stock. Told by a character that he expected more from Larry, the great grouch replies, “I’ve been expecting more from myself my whole life, but it’s just not there.”

What else is new to watch on Israeli TV?

AS REALITY TV has taught us, many people really enjoy watching others squabble, especially if they are wearing glittery clothes and sipping cocktails. But if you would like any wit or complexity in the conflicts you watch, you had better turn to scripted television. To that end, TV powerhouse creator Ryan Murphy, the man behind Glee, American Horror Story, and American Crime Story, made Feud in 2017, which told of the conflict between Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. Now Feud is back for a new season, available in Israel on Yes starting on February 8 (on Yes TV Drama, Sting+ and Yes VOD), and it’s called Feud: Capote Vs. the Swans. This time it focuses on a bitter rift involving writer Truman Capote, best known as the author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood, but who was also a fixture on the New York society circuit for decades. Capote became close to the ladies who lunch, a group of high-profile female friends known for their wealthy husbands but even more for the style and class they projected – a group he nicknamed the swans because of their slender beauty. But when Capote, who hadn’t published anything significant in decades, allowed a chapter from Answered Prayers, his roman a clef in progress about the swans, to be published in Esquire in the mid-’70s, these powerful friends of his saw this as a betrayal. Capote made sure that anyone in the know – and even anyone who had access to newspaper gossip columns – would have no trouble figuring out exactly whom he was writing about. The former friends whose secrets he exposed vowed revenge and he found himself persona non grata among the wealthy and chic. 

CAPOTE VS the Swans, like all of Murphy’s series, has a perfectly chosen all-star cast. Capote has been portrayed by several actors in previous movies and television shows about his life (notably by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who won an Oscar for the movie, Capote). Here he is played by Tom Hollander, best known for The Night Manager and Bohemian Rhapsody, and he does a good job of bringing Capote and his mannerisms to life. The series features many actresses who haven’t had such juicy roles in years, among them Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson, Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill (Jackie Onassis’s sister), Demi Moore as socialite/suspected murderess Ann Woodward, Diane Lane as Nancy “Slim” Keith, and Chloe Sevigny as C.Z. Guest. But the standout is Naomi Watts as Babe Paley, wife of the head of CBS, Bill Paley (played by Treat Williams, who died last June). Watts perfectly embodies the twisted ambition of a neglected wife who hangs on to her social cachet for dear life, because it’s all she has left. You can expect Watts and this show to lead the Emmy nominations next time around. While I’m not sure what someone who didn’t know much about Capote and these society doyennes would make of Feud, I think that the sheer wealth of acting talent will draw in younger viewers. 

DR. JOEL Fleischman (Rob Morrow) is back in Cicely, Alaska, and on our TV screens, as the iconic ’90s sitcom, Northern Exposure, is now available here on Hot 3, Hot VOD and Next TV (and is streaming in the US on Amazon Prime). Northern Exposure was one of the bright spots in the rather lifeless world of network TV 30-plus years ago, and the charm of the town’s quirky inhabitants will come right back as soon as you hear the endearing theme song and watch a moose lope down the main street. 

For those who are unfamiliar with the series, Joel is a self-centered New York doctor whose medical school was paid for by the state of Alaska, in exchange for him working in the state for several years. Joel thought he would be working in Anchorage, but instead is sent to a tiny town in the middle of a very beautiful part of nowhere. There, he finds himself gradually transformed by his encounter with the town’s inhabitants. Some of the series has not aged well, for example, the abrasive racism of the mayor and former astronaut (Barry Corbin) and some of the stereotypical portrayals of what were then called Indians. But John Corbett as the hip DJ, Darren E. Burrows as the Native American teen movie buff, and Elaine Miles as the taciturn receptionist are still sublime and spending time with them will provide wonderful escapism.