Located in a version, or a vision, of the North West Valley of San Fernando in 1969, “Government Cheese”, in the first Wednesday on Apple TV +, belongs to a class of visually striking comic dramas which slide out of the “real” naturalist world, while remaining emotionally coherent. I think of “Lodge 49” with which this show shares an aerospace company (and one… lodge), “Mrs. Davis” And “I am a virgin,” And some seasons of “Fargo.” If “government cheese” is not entirely at the level, or in depth, among the best of them, it is a kind of spectacle that I like a lot, and many good things are there.
Created by Paul Hunter and Aeysha Carr, the series begins with the Brothers 'Chambers' “Time has come today” On the soundtrack, a musical word game because our hero is called Chambers – Hampton Chambers (David Oyelowo) – and it takes time to California Institution for Men in Chino for having written bad checks with “added time for assortment other misdeeds”. (I cannot swear that it was the intention, but everything in the “government cheese”, even the apparently random parts, feels completely thought.)
It is difficult when we meet him there, two years before the main action of the series, but mature for change; His Native American cell companion, Rudy (Adam Beach), suggests talking to Gus (Mykelti Williamson), a kind of quasi-Cleric non-denominal, who said to him: “To God, we are just pieces on a failure and he is the master. Hampton leaves prison with a head full of scriptures and provides for an auto-hharter exercise, prepared during his stay in the machining workshop.
Hampton goes home to his family, unexpectedly, as if he was only back from work. The wife Astoria (Simone Missick), working as a receptionist in an interior design company, sighs uncomfortable. The younger son Harrison (Jahi Di'allo Winston), who calls his father Hampton – “You are not my father,” he said – imbued with local native culture, thanks to an almost country friendship with Rudy, and dresses like Tom Laughlin in “Billy Jack” two years before this film was released. He sports a pen that Rudy gave him; The Eagles will be a reason for his scenario.
Only the joyful younger son Einstein (Evan Ellison), a prophetic genius, propheticly named who decided to become a champion -vault, seems happy to see him. He calls Hampton “Pop”, as David and Ricky made Ozzie. The fact that they are the only black family in their suburb of the middle class is significant, surprising given the tenor of the time, but it is the suburbs for you.
Hampton has “a plan that will make our family the toast of catsworth”. But, says Astoria, “some of us have larger aspirations than catworth.” So there will be trouble.
Exiled by Astoria to the garage, Hampton manufactures her special exercise while the family looks from far away. “Dad does something from nothing,” says Einstein, impressed. “He is like an alchemist.” (He will adorn the exercise, which works as announced, the “magician bit”.)))
David Oyelowo in the series “Government Cheese”.
(Apple TV +)
“Her mother was in the same way,” explains Astoria. “She could make the best sandwiches from anything other than government cheese and white bread.” And there is your title.
The objective of Hampton's plans to sell your invention is a company called Rocket Corp (standing for the real world rocketdyne, which had installations in the hills above catworth), also environmental events.
To complicate things – things, of course, must be complicated – Hampton will learn that he is in debt $ 2,000 for a service not supported by a family of crimes made up of seven brothers (French Canadian but straight out of “fargo”) and that they would kill it very well if he does not pay, now. He has no money, but his old friend Bootsy (Bokeem Woodbine) has a line on a work, by which he means a crime.
Throughout the series, Hampton will meet various characters, some whom he knows, some simply emerging from the undergrowth or the vent – Sunita man, affordably mysterious, is a culminating point of the series – which will guide or push it or intimidate it along its path, as if it were a figure on a fairy tale quest. At one point, he became the biblical Jonas.
In the end, any story that plays with form, as “government cheese” does, itself concerns narration. From Jonah's story, we learn from Rabbi Marty, played by Bob Glouberman, that at the end “nothing happens; He is a cliffhanger, and no one managed to finish the rest … This means that you can choose how you do it. ” (This is certainly how they do it on television.)
An episode opens with a low -budget black and white revisionist film in black – entitled “The Long Road Home”, after the theme of this series – in which Harrison ends as a supplement. (Many westerns have been shot in the rocky hills north of Chatsworth.) Another begins with an “A Day in the Life at Temple Hillel Access Film”, in which the Rabbi Marty underlines that the Torah is called “Chumash” – it is left to the spectator to connect to who is the chumnison. Indeed, the fact that there is a synagogue in this story can be due to this coincidence.
And in an episode dedicated to Astoria – a good change of view – a woman with stereotypical household of an advertisement on television coffee materializes in her living room. (“You don't want to be defined by more than making coffee to make your husband happy? … I'm only alive for 30 seconds every 32 hours; I don't have time to do something else.”)
We are worried about Hampton, whether he comes out of his own path, or the gap of people who try to remove it, even if he is not the most attractive character in the series. Or perhaps better, he has the disadvantage of his work, misadventures and bad decisions occupying the first plan.
“Stop trying to control everything, Hampton,” explains Mani, the character briefly seen, unexplained but very interesting. “And once you accept that everything that is going on is intended to happen, so you will be free.” This does not mean that people have not yet come out to kill you or get back to prison.
Historians of the Valley will benefit from an appearance in the cameo of the Newport pop festivalThe greatest thing that happens in this wood neck in 1969.
