We should all be so lucky to have Tiffany Haddish sit us down for an unauthorized police interrogation, and stipulate that our witness statements be delivered in the form of a specific movie genre. What fun! Except she’s Tiffany Haddish, and she suffers fools the way giraffes suffer pesky insects—with a huff and a slap. “The Afterparty,” the new Apple TV+ series from Chris Miller, is stocked with fools, so Haddish has her work cut out for her, which means we have the pleasure of watching her raise eyebrows at an ensemble comprising Sam Richardson, Ben Schwartz, Ilana Glazer, Zoë Chao, Ike Barinholtz, John Early, Dave Franco, Tiya Sircar, and Genevieve Angelson as self-centered neurotics each suspected of murder most foul.
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The murdered deceased dead person is Xavier (Franco), an obnoxious pop singer of the same make and model as skewered in Andy Samberg’s masterpiece “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.” The location is his cliffside mansion, ostentatious as expected from a narcissist but surprisingly well-designed. The persons of interest are his old high school classmates: Aniq (Richardson), Yasper (Schwartz), Zoe (Chao), Chelsea (Glazer), Brett (Barinholtz), Jennifer (Sircar), and Indigo (Angelson), and possibly Walt (Jamie Demetriou), but no one either remembers his name or frankly any meaningful details about him. (Walt’s running gag is obstructing characters in the middle of a scene in an attempt at forcing them to recall a high school memory that includes him, the poor sap.) Haddish plays detective Danner; Early plays her partner, Culp, a nervous bumbler who, it seems, is there because having him as a partner is better than no partner at all. Maybe.
Miller, executive producing alongside his usual cohort Phil Lord and sharing writing duties with a team including Anthony King, Jack Dolgen, and Kassia Miller, uses Danner as one of two throughlines; Aniq serves as the second. While Danner goes about her investigation, Aniq conducts an investigation of his own with Yasper, his best buddy, to exonerate himself in Xavier’s murder. He’s the number 1 “who” in “The Afterparty’s” “whodunit,” even though he’s a teddy bear in the same vein as your average Richardson character – “adorkable,” Culp tells him. Given that Richardson’s on a recent hot streak, and given that the reason he’s on a hot streak is his charm as a leading man, he makes sense as the series’ main protagonist. It helps that he has a covalent bond with everyone he interacts with in “The Afterparty” specifically, and in his other roles – “Werewolves Within,” “Detroiters,” “Promising Young Woman,” “M.O.D.O.K.” – generally.
But of course, the main draw of the show is the genre-hopping, from rom-com to macho action to musical to Nouvelle Vague-cum-1940s noir, an exercise Miller is particularly well-suited for according to the whole of his filmography. Miller, whether working solo or with Lord, exhibits boundless energy capable of bleeding one punchline into another, creating a comic tempo unlike many of his contemporaries’: It’s hard to keep up with the steady stream of gags, whether in “21 Jump Street,” both “LEGO” movies, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” and “Clone High,” because of a constant need to catch one’s breath. In “The Afterparty,” humor isn’t the central challenge. It’s a feature. The challenge is maintaining genre fidelity, which is trickier.
“The Afterparty” eases that task by isolating each genre to a single chapter, but even so, watching the show succeed in its first three episodes, “Aniq,” “Brett,” and “Yasper” is impressive. Each genre, after all, carries with it different sets of requirements from the last—different tones, different attitudes, different aesthetics. Miller’s cast members have to play their characters in different gears from episode to episode. This isn’t a matter of turning out a “new” performance but modulating their performances in previous episodes, which is a more difficult feat by far. Richardson, for instance, expresses higher confidence in “Aniq” than in “Yasper” and especially “Brett,” while Yasper comes off as a golden retriever with coiffed hair and delusions of grandeur in “Aniq” and “Brett,” but existentially fearful in “Yasper.”
There’s satisfying dexterity to the conceit, though “The Afterparty” still reads as subdued compared with other productions bearing the Lord & Miller name. It’s not that the series isn’t funny, or well-executed, or thoughtful about its choices in writing, in casting, in acting, in editing, and in genre; “Brett” functions as a beautiful lampoon of blustering tough guy pictures and over-styled studio action, bathed in the glow of an enervating blue filter for the purpose of making Brett look cool even though he can’t help looking like an asshole. But the nature of the medium provides less space for Lord & Miller’s maddest tendencies to get fully revved up.
In fact, the single best string of high-brio rapid-fire jokes crops up in “Brett,” which is appropriate given the subject and subject matter; between Brett’s literal pissing contest with Xavier and a badass car chase conducted with Brett’s cutie pie daughter, Maggie (Everly Carganilla), strapped into her booster seat, alternately cheering on her dad and reprimanding him for bad language, “Brett” is the highlight of “The Afterparty’s” opening slate.
But the pleasures to be found in all three are plentiful: Franco’s in full-on sleaze mode, Glazer delights in playing unhinged, Schwartz demonstrates his incredible gift for song and silliness, and Haddish plays up Danner’s disbelief in the “Rashomon” effect of the disparities between testimonies with a contrast between indefatigable and exhausted. She’s heard enough. She has to hear more. She doesn’t want to, but hey, that’s the job. Meanwhile, “The Afterparty’s” job is to make the conclusion as satisfying as every step Miller takes to get there, switching from one mode to the rest. In the premiere, he and his team appear laid back against expectations, but in fine form all the same. [B+]
“The Afterparty” debuts on Apple TV+ on January 28.