Another terrific episode. I’m fully acclimated now to the ride this season is taking us on, and it’s a delight. David Tennant and Michael Sheen get to trade banter with an inspired pair of guest stars in this fun installment.
Faced with the reality that the American remake is Staged is planning to recast them (and only them!), Michael and David are asked to have a Zoom “session” with their respective replacements, so the new actors can pick their brains for character work. David thinks he and Michael can use this as an opportunity for sabotage, but the session of course goes off the rails in ways that no one was expecting.
I won’t spoil who the guest stars are in this episode (although Ben Schwartz shows up playing a character in a later scene, and he’s a blast.) They don’t quite have the “dramatic Zoom reveal” factor that some of the really big-ticket actors on the show have had, but I still think there’s a value in going into it fresh. Suffice to say, the pair is a really good choice, and they spark excellently off of Tennant and Sheen. Also, I love the fact that this American remake, which is ditching Michael and David on the grounds that they’re not big enough names in the U.S., is still apparently using these more well-known British actors to play Michael Sheen and David Tennant. That just cracks me up – rather than replicating the concept of having the new actors just play themselves, the remake evidently intends to keep the Doctor Who/Good Omens/etc. references and everything, just with more famous faces playing these actors that Americans allegedly don’t know. Patently absurd. I love it!
And so, the Zoom session isn’t about tips and tricks of acting remotely, discussing how to make quarantine funny, or advice about how to do the balancing act of playing a fictionalized version of oneself. Instead, it’s about the new actors asking questions to help them get into the characters of David and Michael – running lines and then taking David’s cue on delivery, pinpointing Michael’s precise origins in order to “accurately” capture his Welsh accent, and so forth. This leads to all kind of good fun, and the new actors are a hoot as they try to mine Michael and David for character tidbits.
All of this leads to some fantastic comedy for Tennant. In addition to David’s sabotage attempts of course not going as he planned, he also takes great offense at discovering that Michael is the more desirable “character” of the two and neither actor wants to play David. Naturally, he takes that as a personal attack and tries to defend “David”/himself to them.
Honestly, the guest stars are right that David is more “tepid” of the two characters, but that’s something I really like about Tennant’s performance in this show. It taps in so well so that defeated, mildly-depressed aspect of quarantine where you want to get to work and do something but you can’t bring yourself to get started, where you shuffle around the house in the same clothes everyday because what even is time, anyway? It’s perhaps less “active” and “unpredictable” than Michael’s character, but I’m still impressed with it, and it takes humility for Tennant to play himself that way. (Not that I’m complaining about the guest stars’ take on the character, because it’s hilarious, and David’s reaction to it is even better!)
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