Mo money, no problems?

As neither a father nor a spouse, I was curious about what drew me to Fleishman is in Trouble not once but twice. The Hulu Original was adapted from a novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, whose NYT profiles of stars such as Val Kilmer have become the effusive gold standard. It appears to centre on pious Dr Toby Fleishman (Jesse Eisenberg) who is struggling to deal with his divorce from Rachel (Claire Danes), a status-obsessed, workaholic talent agent. 

They were a financially secure couple ensconced in a Manhattan milieu where everyone's trying to outdo their 'friends' and compete for the title of most unlikeable or obnoxious. Now Rachel's taken off somewhere (not alone), leaving the kids with Toby who's been tearing through the dating apps like a horny college kid fresh onto campus.

Without giving the game away, and to our surprise having mounted a pile of ill will towards a bad mother, he's not the only Fleishman in trouble. 

Meanwhile, we also meet Toby's college friends Libby (Lizzy Caplan) a housewife who feels unfulfilled as a writer and trapped in suburbia, and eternal bachelor Seth (Adam Brody) who's wiser than he looks and realises he needs to grow up.

Seth (Adam Brody) and Libby (Lizzy Caplan) meet Toby’s (Jesse Eisenberg) new dog

It's easy to reduce this show to tedious self-pitying and coveting by a bunch of self-absorbed rich people. It's like, how much is enough? Do you know the meaning of the word "gratitude"? Do you realise you are the chief architects of your own apparent misery? Lighten up. Let go.

And Lord knows, it's open season on the wealthy as The Menu, The White Lotus, Succession and Triangle of Sadness give us endless opportunities to mock them and relish their downfall. But watch long enough and you realise that privilege does not insulate you from unshakeable feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. They've just got bigger, better treadmills and unattainable goals. Turns out, rich people also do irrational very well. 

The show has a wider sphere of relevance than you realise. Fleishman is in Trouble deftly ponders ageing, the uninhibited and life’s-to-be-written wonder of youth, living with the choices we make and trying to navigate diverging paths in relationships. In the case of Rachel and Libby in particular, it's about dealing with exhaustion with oneself. I found it a useful exercise in empathy, how to see a particular situation from a different perspective, something series creator Brodesser-Akner is acutely aware of as an experienced interviewer. 

The cast really makes us confront their characters, whether provoking sympathy, frustration or revulsion. Eisenberg does awkward and neurotic very well (once again) – he's annoying in a good way. While Danes gets a chance to really stretch out across the series and show her emotional range. Head over to Disney+ and give it/them a chance. Your patience will be rewarded.

I will leave you with this obvious but necessary truth bomb from Rachel Connolly in The Slate: “We will all die, someday. And everyone is getting older all the time. It can feel like there are rules about how you are supposed to spend your time and money, but there aren’t. Only choices, which you can make, or not make. Money can make some practical things easier. But ‘two-nannies-and-a-chauffeur, spring-break-in-St.-Barts’ money isn’t really doing that anymore, is it?”

Sax appeal: Kenny G and the tyranny of good taste

Hey, do you want to watch a film about Kenny G? Umm… Ha, that was my first reaction. But Penny Lane's 2021 documentary for HBO is a real eye-opener, revealing much about our perceptions of jazz, the purpose of critique and the boundaries of good taste.

The permed piper of schmaltzy, sax-y pop is a polarising figure. G (government name Gorelick) has amassed more than 75 million album sales with behemoths including Breathless and Duotones.

I remember one man I met while backpacking in India who really went hard for this guy, right over my head. And that was after his prolific 90's period. Either listeners over there are a couple of years behind … or class is timeless.

Anyway, G may be the best-selling instrumentalist of all time but he has been ridiculed for decades and vilified for tarnishing a great art form. Let me put it this way: his music has never spoken to me. And I object to him saying the music of Coltrane and Charlie Parker isn't "heartfelt". However, the fact that he has connected so deeply with so many people for so long can't be without merit. Can it?

We also need to separate the man from the music. Early on in Listening to Kenny G, he says most people know him more as a sound than a personality, which is true. And guess what, he's a likeable guy! Humble, self-deprecating, a little square, corny in an endearing way. And eager to please – he wants to give Lane the best interview she's ever had [cue excited puppy face]. 

But you won't catch him kvetching that much and he seems incapable of hate. As for hard work, practice is his mantra. He racks up two to three hours a day. This guy lives to learn. He's not only one of the most skilled golfers in music. G man also has a pilot's licence and ain't afraid to use it.

G came up in Seattle and excelled in the Franklin High School Jazz Lab under James Gardiner who turned him on to Grover Washington Jr. He made his name in the group Cold, Bold & Together and would play with whoever passed through town, from Sammy Davis Jr to Liberace. Arista records impresario Clive Davis caught him playing with Jeff Lorber Fusion and offered G a deal.

Davis tried to place him in and around the evolving disco-pop / R&B of the day and in very cheesy videos, but it didn’t work. Can’t think why… Not even Kashif, fresh off producing ‘Love Come Down’ for Evelyn “Champagne” King, could find the magic formula.

Then one appearance playing the syrupy ‘Songbird’ on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and suddenly he was the sound of contemporary jazz. To the despair of intrepid players grinding night after night and to the ire of purist Pat Metheny.

As Smooth Jazz Network's Allen Kepler recalls, instrumental hits were few and far between on the pop charts up to that point. Ramsey Lewis' 'The In Crowd' and Average White Band's 'Picking Up The Pieces' were outliers.

Now here’s G following up on one smash hit with another. Soon he’s everywhere, from living rooms to dentists’ rooms. Did you know his song 'Going Home' has become the unofficial closing anthem for food courts, outdoor markets, shopping malls and train stations in China?

It's the functionality of his music, its anodyne nature, that appeals to some and offends others. The New York Times' jazz and pop critic Ben Ratliff poses a hilarious question: "Is Kenny G's music a weapon of consent? Does it make people agree to comply and if so … why?"

It has the whiff of a gaudy fragrance, a weapon of mass seduction. His instrument cavorting in the mix on a bed of roses, like a diva to a ballad. There’s no call and response, no dialogue, as Pop Matters critic Will Layman notes. The dynamic that makes so much jazz out there interesting and thrilling. "This is not sex," he says. "This is masturbation."

Ratliff sees a paradox – it's from a tradition and yet has no conceivable past. 

Writer Jason King calls him a deeply problematic figure: G's been a gateway to jazz for many listeners but he's also extending a long and troubling history of appropriation in popular music where black artists innovate then white artists come along and stylise, receiving greater financial remuneration and critical acclaim. To his credit, G admits his skin colour probably helped his career, only to step back over the line by making a queasy duet with Louis Armstrong.

The final chapter of Lane’s jaunty documentary sees him trying to adapt to a new age by meme'ing (well) on Twitter, appearing in videos with The Weeknd and Katy Perry, even parlaying his Valentine's Day serenade of Kim Kardashian into a respectable feature on Kanye's ‘Use This Gospel’ from the album Jesus Is King.

On 2021’s New Standards, he attempted to play a bit more instead of telegraphing a goopy melody. But it’s a far cry from the incendiary excursions of Shabaka Hutchings or Kamasi Washington. Next, G's eyeing up an Oscar for best score. You can't fault his ambition.

Footage of one concert shows him trying to spread a little "sax education" by covering ‘Desafinado’, which became a major hit for Stan Getz. Then 'Naima' by … John Coltrane. The audience looks back at him with a mixture of confusion and indifference.

Perhaps there's the rub. Does listening to Kenny G say more about the listener than the artist? I'll let you be the judge. Give him a fair hearing though.

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An awkward affair

Amid all the awkward, evasive and stilted exchanges between Nick (Joe Alywn) and Frances (Alison Oiver) in the recent TV adaptation of Conversations with Friends, this banter was like a life preserver thrown out to us. Imagine if they’d adopted this tone all the way through…

It’s not a criticism of the acting but I remember these characters being more interesting in the book. Ennui plays better on the page, as does awkwardness, and we ask less of the dialogue there. Their interiority is richer. Even the more languorous moments can be telling, in a subtle and nuanced manner, if we let our imagination engage.

Writing for the Evening Standard, Phoebe Luckhurst pinpoints what’s lost in adaptation: “Frances is a passive, malleable drip of a girl … at times so passive, such a spectator, she almost disappears off the screen — and Nick is a charisma vacuum. In the book, this is the point: fiction’s best characters are the introspective introverts, the watchful observers who dissect reality for us. But on screen, it means Frances and Nick are constantly outshone, upstaged — to the extent that scenes with just the pair of them can drag.”

The line that really spoke to me when I read Sally Rooney’s novel is this closing thought from the author as narrator: “You live through certain things before you understand them. You can’t always take the analytical position.” It cuts to the core of Frances and how she is so desperate to feel sure of herself, to assert herself as a writer, an adult, a woman.

Capitalism, class and power play into these concerns and the book does a better job of exploring them in the context of her relationship with Nick. How he loans Frances money when dad’s allowance stops. And when she asks Nick to hit her, almost as punishment, after a one-night stand with a guy on a dating app.

Frances has her struggles with mental health, low self-esteem, is quick to self-harm and is diagnosed with endometriosis. She’s going through a lot. But when it comes to Nick, it’s hard to sympathise too much with someone who wants someone else’s husband all to herself and uses her best friend to make him jealous. Here, Alison Oliver does a good job of wringing maximum solipsism out of Frances.

It took a while to empathise with Nick’s struggles, let alone care about them. Anyone can feel worthless or rudderless at some point in their lives, even handsome people. But this revelation felt more out of character than in the book. Lots of people think Alwyn portrayed him perfectly. Maybe he did and I’m asking too much of a depiction on screen. Both are men of few words, I’ll give them that.

nick is dull, emotionless, awkward, and depressed. that’s what he’s supposed to be. joe alwyn portrayed him perfectly https://t.co/QEBnIeG8dU

— abdullah (@abdullahosmn) May 15, 2022

“jOe alWyN is bOriNg aS niCk” DID YOU EVEN READ THE BOOK? Nick has the personality of unseasoned tofu

— laura🏹🪩 swifthaim nation (@taymyepiphany) May 16, 2022

TV Nick does give us some LOL moments though, as if he’s dialing up the “dull” and “emotionless” parts. The way he acknowledges Frances’ suggestion that they talk about their forbidden tryst by grunting “yeah” – I had to run that back 😂 The Terminator had more chat and personality. PS, what’s up with that accent?

When his wife Melissa (Jemima Kirke) has a heart-to-heart/showdown with Frances, her description of him as “pathologically passive” was such an acerbic but appropriate put-down. Kirke delivered it with just the right blend of exasperation, frustration and disdain.

In the book, however, Melissa writes a carefully constructed email to Frances and uses the description “pathologically submissive” – a curious amendment. You might say the two are analogous but for me, one is more extreme than the other. And that does shift their intimacy into a slightly different territory.

Frances tells Nick he is such as appealing “love object” because he is so “curiously passive”, which is not the impression we get in the show. She elaborates: “I knew I would have to be the one to kiss you. And that you would never kiss me, which made me feel vulnerable. But I also felt this terrible power, like, you’re going to let me kiss you, what else will you let me do? It was sort of intoxicating. I couldn’t decide if I had complete control over you or no control at all.'“ I suppose this aspect of their affair, and what they mean to each other in it, is open to interpretation and could have been explored further.

One comment piece argued that the show has merit because it offers a more nuanced portrayal of infidelity on screen, one that’s rooted in unresolved feelings, a desperate need for validation and to be desired, and not the caricature of promiscuity, revenge or pure selfishness we’re used to.

Polyamory is a big talking point at the moment. A challenge to the tradition of monogamy as our best chance of a happy relationship. The “epitome”, as Rooney has described it. In that context, the show is interesting.

When they kiss, you can feel how much Frances and Nick need one another. It’s effusive, overwhelming, liberating, as if their souls are ignited and their bodies must follow. And nothing else matters. Their anxious minds can switch off. Otherwise, their dynamic is flat on TV. And the self-absorption is fatiguing, as her best friend and former girlfriend Bobbi (Sasha Lane) tells Frances.

What did you think of it? How did it compare to the book?

Conversations with Friends is on BBC One and streamable on BBC iPlayer.