TV’s Last Truly Unbothered Show
On an atypically sunny morning in April, an octogenarian actor rested her eyes on a black leather couch in an Airbnb in Blackpool, a seaside town on England’s northwestern coast known for its risqué postcards and dilapidated Victorian grandeur. The house, whose aesthetic fell somewhere between canary-yellow cheer and acid comedown, was in fact filled with grandmotherly women, immaculately groomed, swaddled in beige knits, drinking tea and waiting for their close-ups. Less soigné among them was the movie star Cate Blanchett, who wore prosthetic buckteeth, a permed orange wig, chunky plastic spectacles, and a pink nylon apron. “You certainly look totally unrecognizable,” her co-star, the actor Harriet Walter, told her. “Thank you,” Blanchett replied, deadpan.
The double Oscar winner—heavily tipped to win a third Academy Award next spring for —was taking the day’s work seriously, or as seriously as you. She was there because she’s one of the people who has bought into the vision of , the recondite passion project dreamed up by a squad of veterans almost 10 years ago. The series amounts to a long-running in-joke among friends: It’s an earnestly loving tribute to film history and a regular reunion for people whose schedules are filled with obligations such as embarking on global comedy tours, hosting late-night talk shows and working on Marvel TV spin-offs. “I’m really glad that everybody else enjoys it,” Alex Buono, one of the show's directors, told me. “I feel like it’s a show that we make for ourselves to amuse each other.”
