Once it does, though, that second act makes the show click right into gear. It takes too long for “Life & Beth” to nudge its lead into the next phase of her life that actually drives the show.
#PHOTOS OF ACTRESS SUSANNAH FLOOD SERIES#
Inertia doesn’t make for particularly dynamic TV, especially over a series of episodes that see them standing idly by as other people make decisions. There’s a reason, after all, why passive characters rarely anchor their own shows. In this respect, the first act’s material that focuses on Beth making a slow-mo disaster of her own life makes for the show’s least compelling material by a mile, despite the best efforts of supporting actors like Murray Hill and Larry Owens as her coworkers and, later, comedian Yamaneika Saunders as one of Beth’s outgoing high school friends. Eye-catching casting choices buttress Beth’s story, including 42 year-old Laura Benanti as Beth’s mother (which makes way more sense in flashbacks than in the present day), a surprisingly brittle Michael Rappaport as Schumer’s semi-grifter father, and even David Byrne as her doddering doctor.Īs Beth, Schumer plays a self-described “passenger in the car of her own life.” The character both takes a step away from the omnipresent public perception its actor, who turns in a grounded performance that doesn’t especially need the scripts’ occasional dips into Hot Mess territory to be convincing. An evocative jazz score by Ray Angry and Timo Elliston guides some of the show’s most effective scenes through their peaks and valleys, sometimes doing the heavy lifting for the emotional beats, and sometimes working alongside the actors on their way there. An impressionistic half-hour dramedy, the series feels less like a sitcom than a cousin of FX shows like “Louie,” “Better Things,” and even “Baskets.” The directing style - first honed by Schumer and then taken up by “Inside Amy Schumer” co-producers Kane, Ryan McFaul, and Daniel Powell - is languid in its more realistic scenes until it weaves in jarring moments of surrealism, usually in how it incorporates flashbacks to Beth as a teen (played with nuanced empathy by Violet Young).
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