Flaked

Netflix recently squeezed love babies from between the thighs at a faster pace than the average Reformed mother in Urk. For example, the thirty-something with bad taste was able to immerse himself in a bath full of youth sentiment with Fuller House last month and the sweat in the buttock after that House Of Cards marathon had not yet dried properly or the starting shot for season 2 of Daredevil sounded again. Forget that overpriced subscription to your gym, trying to keep up with Netflix is all the work out you need. Quietly between all the violence of those great titles, Flaked also saw the light of day. Kind of like a comedy starring Arrested Development's GOB. Chip, played by Will Arnett's massive jawline, is that 40-year-old dude whose life just doesn't really want to take off. He lives in a house that is not his, makes three-legged wooden stools in his shop slash workshop that no one wants to have and has an insane amount of emotionless sex with beautiful anonymous women, who will never make it to the altar with him. Of course, the latter is not something to feel sorry for Chip, but the general state of his life is by no means something to be jealous of. After looking just a little too deep into the glass one evening, someone lands on Chip's hood. Death. Nice shit. Another thing Chip needs to find a place for. You can see how he tries to do that in Flaked. At least, I believe so. What the makers exactly want with this series is not entirely clear to me. It's sort of a random slice of life from the life of Chip and his friends, without a real story. Or something. I think. Flaked is too good to be bad, but bad enough not to be called really good either. Yes, put it on a tile. As far as I am concerned, it is mainly the filling of the Netflix library. Actually a bit like those green and yellow rascals between your wine gums. Of course you buy that bag of Red Band for the black and red ones (read: Narcos, OITNB and House Of Cards), but as soon as you have fished them all out, the green and yellow ones will still go on. Usually with slight reluctance and a slumbering feeling of dissatisfaction, but still. Flaked is a green wine gum. Flaked is a green wine gum, just like Love was a yellow earlier and Master Of None an orange. It seems like Netflix's answer to adult comedies (to give the beast a name) like Togetherness, Happy-ish, You're The Worst and Catastrophe, only then less edgy. The occasional boob on the screen and free-spirited Bohemians scolding in an old Mercedes is not enough and that's what you get. Sure, the persistent ones will be treated to some monkeys up their sleeves in the last episodes of Flaked and that ridiculously even brown head of Arnett will be enough for some to keep looking at the screen uncontrollably, but that's about it. kind of. There are eight episodes of half an hour, so make sure to hammer it through once on a lost evening, but you won't miss anything if you leave it alone. gumstarr.com

After seeing 5 episodes, I like this series. As with Love, released by Netflix last month, there is little humor in this 'comedy', but it is more of a dramedy, which seems to be gaining popularity among TV makers. Venice is of course a beautiful location for filming and the different characters come out well.