The obvious disappointment with State of the Union (BBC Two, 10pm) is that Brendan Gleeson is using his American accent. Yes, *that* American accent. The one into which he slides when third on the bill in a random blockbuster or when he played Donald Trump as a toxic thug with an orange carpet on his head two years ago.
Gleeson would be watchable in any scenario – even if required to impersonate Jar Jar Binks from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (mesa your humble servant) or Paul Mescal’s character in Normal People (mesa miserable while having sex). And yet who could deny Stars and Stripes Gleeson is not nearly as agreeable as the full Irish variety?
Or that seeing the actor go through his paces as an American is a bit like observing someone cycle while juggling bowling pins. Impressive sure, but what was the point again?
State of the Union is written by Nick Hornby, author of Fever Pitch and About A Boy and unofficial laureate of dad woes. The theme of marital decay is one he has explored previously, in his many novels about sad men wading through midlife. And in a previous season of State of the Union, in which Chris O’Donnell and Rosamund Pike portrayed a couple on the brink of calling it quits.
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That series was set in London and O’Donnell had fun playing a slightly befuddled Irish man (befuddled Irishman being very much in his wheelhouse). But it’s off to suburban Connecticut for this follow-up in which Gleeson portrays Scott, a businessman in his late 60s confused by the state of the world – and even more so by the state of the world’s pronouns
He is also flabbergasted by hippyish wife Ellen (Patricia Clarkson) and her wish to end their marriage. Sure he hasn’t always been perfect and had his dalliances in the past. That was the 1990s for goodness sake – surely it’s time Ellen got over it.
Hornby and Gleeson work hard at communicating Scott’s inability to come to grips with the great wide world of woke. His head almost explodes, for instance, when he strikes up a conversation with non-binary barista Jay (it’s almost as confusing as a menu offering three varieties of coffee bean).
The problem with State of the Union – which has been divided into self-contained 10 minute instalments – is that Scott’s issues are presented as so much more interesting than those of Ellen, whom Hornby appears to find as essentially unlikeable. She is a two-dimensional hippy who regards environmental protesting as a leisure activity and finds it hilarious that Scott does not know the difference between “shaker” and “quaker” (she has recently joined a local congregation).
All of this makes it hard to believe in her as a real person. What’s even more challenging is imagining these two people ever sharing a long car journey together, let alone 30 years of marriage (stagey direction by Stephen Frears doesn’t help).
That’s no slight on Gleeson or Clarkson who do their best at conjuring a spark between their mutually incompatible protagonists. Alas, State of the Union cannot surmount the flaw of which it accuses Scott. He is only interested in his own woes – and the series suffers from the same shortcomings as it endlessly orbits the great howling void of the male ego.
