Binge-r #174: Letterkenny + True History of the Kelly Gang
Clique Bait: Jared Keeso (Wayne, front) and fellow locals in Letterkenny
LETTERKENNY S1
Streaming Service: SBS on Demand
Availability: All six episodes now streaming, plus S2, S3 + S4
Some international series require subtitles, but this deadpan Canadian comedy about small town life could do with a glossary. “Ferda” (for the boys), “a Texas-size 10-4” (absolute agreement), and “schneef” (snorting drugs) are just a few pieces of argot that inform a series where the contrast between the everyday outlook of the characters and the baroque wordplay and whimsy of their dialogue is extreme. Letterkenny is not just a fictional rural hamlet in Ontario, it’s a comic wonderland that has the rhythms of an absurdist theatre piece and a backdrop of barns, produce stands, and hockey rinks. Behind the piquant charm of each tightly assembled episode – with the added twist of plaintive Canadian accents – is an almost anthropological love for this imaginary realm.
The town’s young men – you rarely see children or parents – fall into various cliques: the hicks (farmers), skids (meth-wired Goths), ice hockey players (mostly transplants), natives (from the First Nations reservation), and Christians (self-explanatory). They are perpetually suspicious and antagonistic of each other, but due to the hamlet’s size they are intimately familiar with each other, drink in the same bar, and share unexpected connections. The plots, which can be negligible or bizarrely involved, originate with Wayne (co-creator Jared Keeso), who lives on the family farm with his cluey sister Katey (Michelle Mylett), where he’s joined daily by friends and co-workers Daryl (Nathan Dales) and Squirrelly Dan (K. Trevor Wilson). Their average discussion flits between the arcane and the profane.
Like fellow Canadian comedies Schitt’s Creek [full review here] and Kim’s Convenience [full review here], there’s a strong sense of affection and empathy for these characters, even when they’re at their parochial and boorish worst. Life in Letterkenny tends to reset after each episode, with Wayne, who takes pride in being known as the toughest guy in Letterkenny, punching on with richly sketched challengers in ritualistic showdowns that end in a handshake and, in one case, an invitation to a “super soft birthday party”. The show is somehow both rougher and sweeter than the average half hour, and its ability to tie together disparate elements in weird and wonderful ways shouldn’t be underestimated. Do I like it? That’s “a Texas-size 10-4”.
Wilde Colonial Boy: George McKay (Ned Kelly) in True History of the Kelly Gang
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG (Stan, 2019, 124 minutes): Snowtown director Justin Kurzel dispenses with the familiar details – period finery, bustling sets, sturdy exposition – that give the historic drama its gravity. His portrait of mythic colonial bushranger Ned Kelly exists in a netherworld of scabrous relationships and political extremism. As the radicalised son of an (Irish) immigrant, Ned is confused and reactive. Whether as a boy (Orlando Schwerdt) sold by his mother, Ellen (Essie Davis), to a manipulative criminal, Harry Power (Russell Crowe), or a young man (George McKay) used by the ruling British system, he’s more a victim of his heritage than the master of his own destiny. The few authority figures encountered are police officers (Charlie Hunnam and later Nicholas Hoult) driven by their sexual urges, which adds to the queer playfulness and violent threats of emasculation to give the story a spurting psychosexual energy. The many individual gambits don’t always coalesce, but the spectral images that illustrate the textbook tale of police shootouts and the Glenrowan siege are striking. This is what the world looks like, Kurzel says, when you’re excluded from it.
New on Netflix: Uploaded on his birthday and looking as if it was shot on leftover film stock from Eraserhead, What Did Jack Do? (2020, 17 minutes) finds David Lynch twisting his neo-noir roots into absurdist tragedy as he plays a police detective interrogating a capuchin monkey named Jack Cruz suspected of murdering a romantic rival. The short is full of non-sequiturs and obtuse exchanges and boasts a glinting ballad sung for salvation. You can take what you want from this eccentric offering – for me it was pleasure in Lynch’s singularity.
New on SBS on Demand: Uli Edel’s The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008, 149 minutes), is a compelling study of the terrorist cell that shook then West Germany in the early 1970s, showing the escalation between the individual and the state as a destructive, unstable force; The Running Man (1987, 97 minutes) is one of the pulpiest, enjoyable titles from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s pumped-up B-movie years, playing a political prisoner in a future America hunted for ratings on a homicidal game show.
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