Andor is a Star Wars show for grown-ups
It's doing absolutely everything right
Kia ora and welcome back to Rec Room, The Spinoff’s pop culture and entertainment newsletter, brought to you by Panasonic. I’m your host, Catherine McGregor, and I’ll be joined on occasion by the rest of The Spinoff’s team to bring you the best of what we’re watching and listening to right now. OK, let’s get on with the show…
Andor is the Star Wars show grown-ups have been waiting for
Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and Faye Marsay as Vel Sartha in Andor
The lowdown
The latest addition to the torrent of small-screen Star Wars content, Andor tells the story of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) from the time of his recruitment into the Rebel Alliance up to the events depicted in the movie Rogue One. That’s a span of around five years, according to Star Wars lore, and the Andor series is planned as two 12-episode seasons, the first screening now on Disney+.
So. Another month, another new piece of Star Wars IP. What makes Andor different, and remarkable, is the man behind the show, lauded screenwriter and sometimes-director Tony Gilroy. He’s the guy who wrote the Bourne movies, and the stellar George Clooney flick Michael Clayton, and was the co-writer of Rogue One. With that sort of pedigree you’d be safe in expecting Andor to be a bit more ambitious than, say, The Book of Boba Fett, the stale Mandalorian spinoff that came and went with barely a ripple earlier this year.
The good
Here’s the moment when I knew I was all-in on this show (it comes around 10 minutes in so it isn’t too much of a spoiler): Andor straight-up executes a guy in cold blood, a guy who, until a bullet goes through his forehead, was begging for his life. OK, he kind of had it coming, but still: that’s not the sort of thing we’re used to seeing from a Star Wars hero. It’s clear from the jump that this show isn’t going to be overly concerned with getting a PG13 rating or selling admittedly cute merch.
Those killings (Andor actually kills two guys) are the inciting incident for everything that is to come, though Gilroy isn’t in any hurry to rush us into the story. Stuff happens – a security force is dispatched to apprehend Andor; a mysterious stranger arrives to acquire some valuable stolen property – but the focus in the early episodes is exploring the universe of the story. It’s one revealed to us in small, beautifully observed moments and in conversations written not just to move the plot from A to B, but to build lived-in, fleshed-out characters inhabiting a rich and fascinating world.
That’s all screenwriting 101, sure, but wow does it make a difference when you’re in the hands of a master like Gilroy. It’s there in the world-weary security commander spitballing a cover story for a couple of inconvenient murders – “something sad but inspiring in a mundane sort of way”. In young striver Kyril Sarn (Kyle Soller), embarrassed into admitting he’s modified his uniform with “pockets, piping and some light tailoring”. Or in Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård)’s seatmate grumbling about declining standards of public transport on the planet Ferrix: “We should be charging them!”
Denise Gough as Imperial Security Bureau lieutenant Dedra Meero
These are characters who talk like real people talk, and they’re brought to life by actors who can really act. Gilroy shot the series in England, and the cast is packed to the gills with talent, from heavy hitters like Skarsgård and Fiona Shaw (Killing Eve), to “hey, it’s that guy” types like Anton Lesser and Rupert Vanisttart (both ex-Game of Thrones) and The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach, to left-field choices like Scottish actor Alex Ferns, formerly of long-running soap Eastenders, who has a scene-stealing role as the puffed-up, power tripping Sgt Kostek.
The care that’s gone into Andor is obvious in every scene, not just in the performances but also the music (by Succession’s Nicholas Britell), the shooting style – on real sets and locations, unlike the CGI-heavy Mandalorian and Boba Fett – and the exquisitely detailed production design by Luke Hull, whose biggest previous job was on the HBO series Chernobyl.
The verdict
It’s already become trite to call this “Star Wars for grown-ups” but that’s exactly what it feels like. The brilliant thing about Andor is that its more mature approach doesn’t come at the expense of humour, or shootouts, or general Star Wars weirdness. It’s all still there, but with so much more besides. Andor is not just a great Star Wars show. Andor is great, full stop. (Disney +)
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Podcast rec: Shameless Acquisition Target
Podcasts don’t come much more meta than Shameless Acquisition Target, a podcast created with the sole purpose of being bought out by a large conglomerate – a Spotify, say – and giving host Laura Mayer a big pay day. It doesn’t sound like a premise that could support an entire series, but it does, because SAT is really about how podcasting became big business, and how podcast companies fit into the modern media industry – IP exploitation, corporate buyouts and all. It helps that Mayer is both a veteran producer of some of the smartest podcasts around – she knows this business – and a wry on-mike presence herself. Think of Shameless Acquisition Target as a shoestring version of the first season of StartUp documenting the early days of indie podcasting company Gimlet… which was itself bought out by Spotify just a few years later.
Documentary rec: Sins of Our Mother
There’s one person running the true crime documentary game right now, and her name is Skye Borgman. The prolific director and cinematographer is behind a slew of Netflix’s most addictive and disturbing documentaries – Abducted in Plain Sight, Girl in the Picture, I Just Killed My Dad – and her latest release, Sins of Our Mother, is equally WTF. It tells the story of how a Mormon mother of three threw herself into a batty religious cult with tragic results, but that doesn’t even begin to suggest all the horrifying twists contained in the three-episode series. I know I should feel queasy about finding entertainment in other people’s pain (and I do have my limits – a show about serial killer/cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer made by Glee’s Ryan Murphy? No thank you) but I have to be honest: I watched Sins of Our Mother in one sitting. (Netflix)
Catch-up rec: Industry
Myha'la Herrold as Harper and Ken Leung as Eric in Industry
This newsletter launched slightly too late to recommend Industry while season two was on (whatever “on” means in the streaming era), but I couldn’t let it go without a mention. The HBO series, set among a group of highly sexed (and very often plain high) young traders in the City of London, is one of the most intense TV watching experiences around. Think Succession meets Euphoria, or The Bear with Bloomberg terminals instead of kitchen knives. I found season one impressive but hard to love, its unrelentingly awful characters trapped in a stiflingly closed-off world. Season two, though, was a revelation. The showrunners have spoken in interviews about realising they’d failed to inject the show with enough plot when it launched in 2020; that’s definitely not an issue this year. While season one I watched mostly for the vibes of the thing (and so many killer needle drops), season two was as gripping as anything I’ve seen on TV this year. If you’re coming to it fresh, watch Industry from the start – and expect it to get better and better. Also, pro tip: turn on closed captions, they really help with the finance jargon. (Neon)
Random links
Taika Waititi’s Time Bandits reboot for Apple TV+ is full steam ahead, and it’s going to star Friends’ Lisa Kudrow.
Why is Good Housekeeping running stories on Marvel post-credits sequences? Nieman Labs has the answer (spoiler: it’s pageviews)
What’s on TV this month? New White Lotus, new Derry Girls and much more.
Andor’s Tony Gilroy talked about the challenge of getting authentic, naturalistic performances from actors once they enter the Star Wars universe.
Sky’s new Sky Box is about five years too late, says Dylan Reeve.
I enjoyed Andrew Dominik, director of Blonde (which I will absolutely not be watching) getting put through the wringer in this Sight and Sound interview.
They’re making a Dangerous Liaisons TV show!
RIP Coolio. It’s hard to overstate how huge ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ was in 1995, and this New York Times piece tells the story of how it came to be.
Elle Hunt, formerly of this parish, lists all the worries she had while watching Don’t Worry Darling for GQ.
Confess, Fletch, the new movie directed by Greg Mottola and starring Jon Hamm, looks great. The campaign to bring it to NZ screens starts right here, right now, though judging by the way its US release has been buried I’m not getting my hopes up.
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