The Bingeworthy Breakdown is an occasional look at new and returning TV shows. An estimated 500 seasons of scripted TV will air in 2017, and we’re here to help you sort the must-sees from the can-skips, because life is way too short, and Peak TV way too crowded, for investing in a show you’re not going to love. This week, we’re going to dive in to Season 1 of Amazon‘s “Comrade Detective,” created by Brian Gatewood and Alex Tanaka, with director Rhys Thomas, starring and executive produced by Channing Tatum, so you can decide if you’re going to give yourself over to as it’s available now on Amazon Prime.
Well, we’re in the dog days of the summer season now, as the ol’ astrological saying goes. What’s good on television?
Good question. Do you like Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt?
Boy how! Who doesn’t like those two guys?
Only horrible people who have no taste for things that are good, but let me tell you: Think twice before your love of Tatum and JGL persuades you to watch “Comrade Detective.”
Here we go again.
No, no! Not quite! Hear me out! This isn’t another “Gypsy”! I’m not going to write words to dissuade you from watching the show wholesale! Instead I’m going to write you a complex word cocktail to unpack what’s good about the show and what isn’t, and leave the rest up to you! That sound like a fair trade to you?
First, you’re going to have to tell me what the heck “Comrade Detective” is. You had me at “Tatum” and “Gordon-Levitt” and lost me with your crankiness.
“Comrade Detective” is a new Amazon show that’s actually an old and thought-to-be-forgotten Romanian TV series, a brawny buddy-cop joint born in and of the 1980s. Unsurprisingly, its cast is staffed chiefly by Romanian actors. Maybe more surprisingly, Amazon called in a whole bunch of comedians, plus an Oscar winner or two, to dub over the original Romanian cast for its debut here in the U.S. of A.. Definitely more surprising: The whole “Romanian archival production” bit is a charade.
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…wait, what?
It’s fake! It’s malarky! “Comrade Detective” is just a schlocky gag concept that Alessandro Tanaka and Brian Gatewood dreamed up together, and the claim that the show existed at all prior to 2017 is pure and intentional affectation. It didn’t. The producers just decided that, since they couldn’t get the rights to an actual 1980s state-produced propaganda series, they would cut out the middleman and make their own. Hence, “Comrade Detective” in all its American-funded glory, a product meant to ape both an era and a culture with cheap set and costume designs, plus the vocal talents of successful, talented, or simply well-known American performers. Think, say, Woody Allen’s “What’s Up, Tiger Lily?,”, except that film actually does overlay Americanized aural tracks over a foreign intellectual property.
So it’s a real show that’s dressed up as a fake show, with real actors voiced over by other actors, and it’s all rooted in ’80s pop cultural nostalgia?
Basically, yeah. “Comrade Detective” is the exact sort of thing that announces its palatability just by being itself, but the truth is that you might not catch on to what it is without reading about its plot first. I imagine folks who blind-watch the show will feel off-kilter to start with, though I may not be giving the average viewer enough credit. As the series plays coy about its made-up history and shrugs casually at its own structure, so too does it tip its hand and let you know what you’re watching; even if you haven’t the faintest clue that Tatum and Gordon-Levitt are involved, you’ll recognize their voices coming out of the mouths of Romanian-born leading men Florin Piersic Jr. and Corneliu Ulici, and if you don’t, then you’ll eventually pick out someone you do know in the constant stream of cameos, whether one-off or recurring.