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Chivalry is a new comedy drama which felt a bit odd to get into at first, because it feels like we’ve been dropped into a series halfway through it having already begun.
But getting past that and in watching the first two episodes, Indie movie director and flavour-of-the-month Bobby Sohrabi (Sarah Solemani) – who once hired an actress she found working in a brothel – has become the new director on A Little Death. Producer Cameron O’Neill (Steve Coogan – who co-wrote this with Ms Solemani) has to break the news to now-former director Pierre (Djilali Rez-Kallah), who isn’t happy, and it leads to a most bizarre opening scene.
In what sounds like a movie that will be very ‘ooh la la’, at one point, Cameron asks for Bobby’s opinion on the content, and let’s just say she’s not overly keen – although she has a zillion more words to say about it than that, but I’m not going to repeat them all here, since that’s what watching a programme is all about.
Also add in pushy American actress Lark (Sienna Miller), who once new Cameron very well indeed, plus across the two episodes I’ve seen so far, they meet Paul Rudd who’s playing Samuel Morse in a drama, as well as John C Reilly, who co-starred with Coogan in Stan & Ollie.
As an aside, at one point, Steve is reading and replying to a text on his phone, and I’m wondering if because it’s a preview, that’s why we’re not seeing the text conversation pop up, as you normally would on a soap like Hollyoaks? Then again, from the conversation that follows, it may not be something that needs to pop up onscreen. If you see something, let me know.
Also, Coogan’s mannerisms in this sounds just like Alan Partridge, especially if he’s in a situation when he says the wrong thing, and tries to dig himself out of his hole. I know he largely plays the same sort of character anyway, but he’s still worth watching.
Overall so far, after these two opening episodes, Chivalry feels less than the sum of its parts, but I will check out more as it’s only six episodes of around 24 minutes each.
Chivalry begins on Channel 4 on Thursday April 21st at 10pm, after which, the entire series will be on All 4.
The series is not yet available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD.
Director: Marta Cunningham
Producer: Isabel Richardson
Writers: Steve Coogan, Sarah Solemani
Music: Adem Ilhan
Theme: Daniel Pemberton
Cast:
Bobby Sohrabi: Sarah Solemani
Cameron O’Neill: Steve Coogan
Pierre: Djilali Rez-Kallah
Jean Shrill: Wanda Sykes
Ama: Lolly Adefope
Aston: Adjani Salmon
Noah: Kaylen Luke
Lark: Sienna Miller
Rick: Robert Lonsdale
Lucy: Mary Malone
Tatiana: Aisling Bea
Himself: Paul Rudd
Himself: John C Reilly
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.