Mammals

Available on: Amazon Prime

Mammals is a curious show. Playwright’s forays into television and/or film can often yield mixed results, and this proves to be the case for the lauded Jez Butterworth.

Admittedly, I’m not familiar with Butterworth’s previous work but his transition from theatre to the altogether different world of the small screen is sadly not a seamless one.

Much of that may be to do with the casting of his friend James Corden, that all-too-familiar jar of human Marmite, in the lead role of a cuckolded husband desperate to uncover the mystery of his improbably exotic wife’s many extramarital affairs.

Corden is a better actor than many would care to admit, but he and co-star Melia Kreiling fail to establish the chemistry needed to make a sitcom work. Their relationship is so devoid of believability that it renders it nigh on impossible to emotionally invest in, leaving us unsurprised that Corden’s character has been cheated on and, more damningly, nonplussed about it.

There is also an odd subplot involving Sally Hawkins’ character which rarely serves as anything more than a welcome distraction from Corden and Kreiling’s permanently sad faces.

Butterworth imbues his screenplay with a number of surrealist elements that appear to be in service of an overarching metaphor about the central issue of fidelity, but the events which translate to the screen rarely scratch beyond the surface of such deeper issues.  

Admittedly, Mammals is pleasingly short, which makes it an easy series to binge. But it’s hard to escape the gut feeling that, given the talent involved, this is a failed experiment.