Marvellous Mrs Maisel. Worth Watching?

 

Why to watch? because of clothing? interiors’ design? improving English? interest in stand-up comedy? Yes, you can watch tv series ‘Marvelous Mrs Maisel’ because of any of these reasons, but I will remember it because of friendship story of two main characters.

Midge, the main start of the story, is left alone by her husband because of the affair with a secretory and she starts a new life. What type of life? She does not know, but at a certain point she is on stage with a microphone. One time and then another time, and one more. The club manager Susie, who notices how natural Midge while performing (she is not even performing, she is just drunk) and persuades her to start a stand-up career. Susie becomes then Midge’s manager and producer (whatever that means in the 5o’s).

Their relationship grows. They search different strange places to get a chance to perform, they celebrate failures, they sleep in one room while touring. They look like they should never have met and talked to each other (so different they are). They are dressed up in such a way that one of them should be somewhere else, not where they are. And still their conversations is the most interesting thing for me in this series – the way the talk about relationship, stand-up, husbands, children. They acquire their own rituals, favourite table in the bistro, their own motto.

There are other reasons to watch it of course:

Why to watch?

• because of atmosphere of 50’s of the last century. This is like Mad Men, but with characters that you actually like.
• because of interest in stand-up comedy, its history and development. One of the characters in the movie is Lenny Bruce (role is delivered by Luke Kirby) who is a real and famous stand-up comedian of that time. His speeches in the movie are based on real speeches (you can compare a song by Lenny in Episode 10 of Season 2 with the original or watch his performance on tv)
• in order to see how to progress in men’s world and in men’s profession and to stay firm when you are told you’d better be a singer if you are a woman, when you are denied payment for your performance, when people assume you will be worse than any male comedian just because you are a woman.
• in order to see a creation of Gilmore Girls producers. Yes, Gilmore Girls where we were getting used to speed talking, learned to decode interesting allusions and metaphors and hoped that the mother and the daughter will be friends forever.

Watching Experience

• If you are not aware what the movie is about, you might assume based on the first episode that it is about love and affairs, but then it turns out to be about finding your path.
• If you watch it, you have watch it in English, but probably you will have to do it with subtitles (if you are not a native speaker of course). The actors are talking very fast and in order to understand all jokes and references you might even need to google some stuff. Just in order to understand what The Borscht Belt means and why performance in Concord is such a big deal.

I will be waiting for Season 3 and will be wondering about all these magic of performing on stage like Marvelous Mrs Maisel and if you are still doubting whether to watch or not, this is the Season 2 trailor.