Mark Duplass, left, and Ray Romano, right, in Paddleton.Netflix
It is perfectly possible you are not that interested in the 91st Academy Awards (Sunday, ABC, CTV, 8 p.m.).
There’s no host. No, wait, there are presenters, but no actual host. No, wait, there’s a rumour that Whoopi Goldberg will step up, last minute, to host it. Never mind. Some of the categories will be presented during commercial breaks. No, wait, all of the 24 categories will be presented live on TV. It will go on and on through the evening, moving very slowly to the climactic best picture award. That’s the big deal, which on one occasion went to La La Land. No, wait, it was Moonlight. There’s all that. And there’s the fact that one of the hot picks for best picture, Roma, has been available on Netflix for weeks. You could just watch that instead.
There’s a wealth of other material to watch. Then you can read about the Oscars on Monday. People do that and live happily, it seems. Besides, why watch an awards ceremony for people who can’t actually organize an awards ceremony?
Paddleton (streaming on Netflix) is one of those Netflix films that falls somewhere between TV movie and actual old-school movie – small-scale, small cast but substantial. It’s a very odd concoction that treads rather carefully into the territory of platonic love between two middle-aged guys.
Romano plays Andy, a low-key guy and mostly a loner except for his long-standing friendship with neighbour Michael.Patrick Wymore/Netflix
Ray Romano plays Andy, a low-key guy, mostly a loner except for his long-standing and fast friendship with neighbour Michael (Mark Duplass, who also co-wrote). Essentially they live like a long-married couple, watching TV, eating pizza and swapping banter about the popular culture of their youth. Sometimes they go outside to play their own version of racquetball called Paddleton. And then Michael is diagnosed with terminal cancer.
How do such men deal with this? Well, they spend too much time telling dry jokes and joshing about kung-fu movies. An underlying idea is that men of a certain age and type put too much weight onto shared appreciation of dumb entertainment, as an avoidance technique. There’s real pathos in what is sometimes an improvised script about a bromance, but one that is less about male angst than the human reluctance to connect.
Romano has, since the end of Everybody Loves Raymond, carved out a niche as a useful character actor specializing in middle-age slacker roles. And he makes a rare return to the stand-up routine that got him a TV series in another new Netflix special, Right Here Around the Corner. It’s been 23 years since he released a comedy special and, the thing us, this isn’t a “special.” He’s not in a theatre filled with adoring fans. He does two drop-in sets, one at New York’s Comedy Cellar and the other at Village Underground. The audience is surprised to see him and he’s under some pressure to entertain. That he does, concentrating on material about his family and friends.
Twenty-three years after his last stand-up special, Romano debuts his first Netflix comedy special, Ray Romano: Right Here, Around the Corner.Netflix
He’s not a sour, what-happened-to-my-youth comedian. He’s an everyman joker, occasionally risqué but mostly breezy and warm. He’s rich and he’s got nothing to prove except that he can still do stand-up.
Also airing this weekend: Note that FX Canada is airing a marathon of Better Things (Sunday, 8 p.m.) in advance of the coming new season. Pamela Adlon plays actress Sam Fox, an acerbic and endearing single mother. She has three daughters, an ex-husband, an English mother and, well, daily life to deal with. The languorous pace matched with Adlon’s steely comic timing is irresistible. The show defies description or neat summary. It is, however, in its barely definable excellence, a great counterpoint to what is being honoured at the Academy Awards.
And, if you must watch the Oscars red-carpet coverage, that’s fair. Various actors show off their outfits and physique and prove, in a backward way, that in Hollywood the most daring kind of acting work is putting on weight for a role. ETalk Live at the Oscars (CTV, 5:30 p.m.) kicks it off and then there’s more starting at 6:30 p.m., after the local news, promising “a raw, in-the-moment red-carpet show”, with the usual crew of Ben Mulroney, Danielle Graham and Lainey Lui. Meanwhile, on the E! channel, Ryan Seacrest and Giuliana Rancic do their red-carpet coverage from 6 p.m. If you can stand it.