Whatever was considered canon has been shot out of a cannon. “I have a disease where I can’t recognise people who aren’t hot,” declares privileged pretty boy Fred Jones (Glenn Howerton),and every familiar character fromScooby Doo – minus the snack-seeking pooch – is a high school handful. Daphne Blake (Constance Wu) is a mean girl,while clean-cut Norville “Shaggy” Rogers (Sam Richardson) has an unrequited crush on Velma. The teen girls getting murdered around them are a prop for the gags,some of which are actually good.
With its counter-culture nods,the originalScooby Doo was a Saturday morning hit for Hanna-Barbera that debuted in 1969 (and never truly disappeared from television schedules). The history and conventions are ripe for mockery,a specialty of creator Charlie Grandy,who worked with Kaling onThe Office and her peppy sitcomThe Mindy Project. It’s a voice that’s become common in Hollywood comedies:self-reflexive,Twitter-friendly,and satirical. It’s noteworthy that the actual animation is too often staid. This is a writer’s realm.
Velma knows what it wants to deride and dismiss – “minorities on TV can only sell drugs to escape poverty,” Velma notes – but it’s less certain about what matters. While no-one is lamenting “meddling kids”,there’s a surplus of plotting,with both Velma and Daphne trying to solve mysteries tied to absent parents. The attraction between the two is played as another source of anxiety for Velma,but when her flagrant comic narcissism is central to the character’s identity,it’s hard to imagine that an actual relationship could matter.
AsRiverdale is toTwin Peaks,this is a homage whose excess vacillates between the blissful and the bonkers. The 25-minute episodes are a suitable delivery vehicle for the humour,but across a season it has a lot of work to do to function as a cohesive whole. Binge already has an adult animated comedy that updates a famous franchise in the form of the DC Comics-adjacentHarley Quinn. That show’s transgressions are transformative.Velma isn’t there yet.
Stonehouse
★★★★
BritBox
Played with perplexed perfection bySuccession’s Matthew Macfadyen,John Stonehouse was a 1970s prototype for today’s golden age of incompetent and insidious British politicians. On a ministerial trip to Cold War-era Czechoslovakia the Labour MP leaps into the first honey trap proffered and then greets the news that he is to be a traitor with a solitary query:“Would I be paid?”