There's the well-known observation that something - a programme, a film, an album, a team of whatever - is more than the sum of its parts. It is meant as a compliment: something works well, over and above what might be expected of it.
Well, this Netflix production, A Man In Full, manages, somehow and I've yet to work out quite how, to be less than the sum of its parts.
It is a 'limited series' - in Netflix speak - of six episodes which purports to be 'the film of the book of Thomas Wolfe's novel of the same name. Well, I haven't read the book but I have read a Wiki page about it summarising its themes and I do know that it is 752 pages long and thus quite a whopper.
I have heard that Wolfe's 'reportage' style isn't to all tastes - and I have so far not read any of Wolfe's books - but I understand in his novel he attempts to examine the complex racial mix of Atlanta, Georgia, society, among other things.
Whether or not he succeeds, I can't say, but it does strike me as wholly unlikely that a 'limited series' will successfully pull off something as complex. And Netflix's version is anything but complex. In fact, it is remarkably conventional drama.
In fact, it doesn't even attempt to do so deal in complexities. We get essentially get two 'stories', possibly three (this third intricately bound up with one of the others, so make that 'two and a half stories', which are only superficially linked, and the emphasis is on 'superficial'. Each could exist on its own without the other.
And although both tales - or is that all three tales - are entertaining enough and well-acted by all, they are oddly inconsequential.
One, in which a 'larger than life' real estate mogul who owes almost one billion dollars in loans to his bank and we follow his attempts to get off the hook, is in a way a tad flimsy. And it ends in a very odd way.
The second, a black man who in a series of unfortunate developments might find himself jailed for several years through no fault of his own, does conclude - in a rather old-fashioned 'it all comes right in the end' (which would satisfy sentimentalists) but it, too, is strangely pointless.
So there you have it: Netflix's attempt to 'film' a doorstop of a novel is, frankly, whittled down into two common or garden TV movies. They stand out because of the quality of the acting, but otherwise seem to have no reason to exist. Odd.
Well, this Netflix production, A Man In Full, manages, somehow and I've yet to work out quite how, to be less than the sum of its parts.
It is a 'limited series' - in Netflix speak - of six episodes which purports to be 'the film of the book of Thomas Wolfe's novel of the same name. Well, I haven't read the book but I have read a Wiki page about it summarising its themes and I do know that it is 752 pages long and thus quite a whopper.
I have heard that Wolfe's 'reportage' style isn't to all tastes - and I have so far not read any of Wolfe's books - but I understand in his novel he attempts to examine the complex racial mix of Atlanta, Georgia, society, among other things.
Whether or not he succeeds, I can't say, but it does strike me as wholly unlikely that a 'limited series' will successfully pull off something as complex. And Netflix's version is anything but complex. In fact, it is remarkably conventional drama.
In fact, it doesn't even attempt to do so deal in complexities. We get essentially get two 'stories', possibly three (this third intricately bound up with one of the others, so make that 'two and a half stories', which are only superficially linked, and the emphasis is on 'superficial'. Each could exist on its own without the other.
And although both tales - or is that all three tales - are entertaining enough and well-acted by all, they are oddly inconsequential.
One, in which a 'larger than life' real estate mogul who owes almost one billion dollars in loans to his bank and we follow his attempts to get off the hook, is in a way a tad flimsy. And it ends in a very odd way.
The second, a black man who in a series of unfortunate developments might find himself jailed for several years through no fault of his own, does conclude - in a rather old-fashioned 'it all comes right in the end' (which would satisfy sentimentalists) but it, too, is strangely pointless.
So there you have it: Netflix's attempt to 'film' a doorstop of a novel is, frankly, whittled down into two common or garden TV movies. They stand out because of the quality of the acting, but otherwise seem to have no reason to exist. Odd.