SPOILER ALERT – some plot details are mentioned below.
I'd been waiting for quite some time for Good Behavior's premiere last night, and I'm happy to say that I wasn't disappointed. In fact, there were two one-hour episodes that were aired back-to-back, making for a two-hour premiere. I think the second episode really did need to be aired with the first one, because there wasn't a really good stopping point between the two and a goodly amount of suspense was involved. One reason I was waiting with bated breath was Michelle Dockery. I'm an enthusiastic fan of Downton Abbey and I very much liked the character of Lady Mary Crawley as portrayed by Ms. Dockery. I suspected that Michelle Dockery was an extremely good actress from the way she played Lady Mary, and I looked forward to seeing her do something very different from that role. The TV advertisements for Good Behavior promised a very different character for her in the new series, and different it is.
Letty Dobesh is out on parole for good behavior, working at a waitress in a diner or coffee shop for a jerk of a boss when the series begins. At that point, we haven't seen her doing anything wrong, but her boss fires her when she has, in fact, done nothing wrong. We soon learn that she's a brazen thief with sobriety issues. She not only drinks, but uses drugs as well. She's also capable of conning people. And those are all reasons for Michelle Dockery to show us that she can act and then some. Not only does she speak with an American accent, she uses more than one type of American accent. Letty, for example, can affect a southern accent when she's wearing a wig and pretending to be someone other than herself.
In the course of her robbing hotel rooms while in cahoots with the front desk clerk, one man returns to his room with another man. Letty hides behind louvered closet doors and overhears a plot involving murder for hire. She does her best to keep the intended murder victim from being murdered – when it comes to crime, she is unwilling to step over the line between herself and killing other people. In the process of trying to prevent the crime, she is discovered by the murderer and ends up becoming his unwilling accomplice in a further murder. People who don't like "bad" language will not appreciate the language used in Good Behavior. Since it's on a cable channel, they use every vulgar word found in American English, though they do blank out all forms of the "f" word from the soundtrack and the closed captions. (It's easy enough to figure out what they've blanked out, since they don't blank out any other "dirty" words, and context provides all you need to know that a certain present participle used as an adjective is what's missing, for example.
So the story line itself is gritty, to say the least, and the character of Letty Dobesh is not wholly admirable – far from it. However, she makes for a very attractive anti-hero. The writing here is very convincing, as to both the story and the dialogue, and the characters are always interesting. The murderous bad guy, Javier, is played by Juan Diego Botto, a handsome Argentine man of slight build who appears to be much younger than his actual 41 years – and he's a perfect foil to the 35-year-old Michelle Dockery. So far, there has been a hint that Javier only undertakes to murder people who deserve it. Add that to his attractive appearance, and it's hard to hate him completely, just as it's hard to like Letty completely. Sill, Javier is on the bad side of the mark, and Letty is doing her best to keep him from doing what he does, though so far, she has managed to fail in two separate incidents.
I note that Letty has a particularly nasty mother who is doing her best to make Letty's life as miserable as she can, primarily by preventing her from seeing her son. Letty's mother is a piece of work herself, a chain-smoking harridan with a low voice my mother would have called a "whiskey tenor".
There is an occasion in the second episode for Michelle Dockery to sing a song, which is not a bad thing. She sings very nicely, with a lovely alto voice that is never shrill. If she came out with an album of vocals, I'd buy it.
I was enrolled in the goings on by the third minute of watching the first episode and, after that, I was riveted to my TV screen. I didn't want to miss a single word of the dialogue, a single frame of the visuals, or a single detail of the plot. Me, I would have liked it a lot less if the story and the dialogue weren't as gritty as they are.
I can see why Michelle Dockery went forward with Good Behavior. I believe she wanted the chance to show an audience what she could do, acting wise, and she certainly is doing that and then some. Here is an actress who is willing to get her hands dirty and her elbows scraped, who must believe that a really practitioner of her profession is one who can take on any role and make the audience forget any past roles she's played.
Great show, not just a good one – and all the better because Michelle Dockery is so convincing as a woman who isn't completely bad, but certainly not what you'd call virtuous. Letty Dobesh wouldn't be half as interesting if she were.
I'd been waiting for quite some time for Good Behavior's premiere last night, and I'm happy to say that I wasn't disappointed. In fact, there were two one-hour episodes that were aired back-to-back, making for a two-hour premiere. I think the second episode really did need to be aired with the first one, because there wasn't a really good stopping point between the two and a goodly amount of suspense was involved. One reason I was waiting with bated breath was Michelle Dockery. I'm an enthusiastic fan of Downton Abbey and I very much liked the character of Lady Mary Crawley as portrayed by Ms. Dockery. I suspected that Michelle Dockery was an extremely good actress from the way she played Lady Mary, and I looked forward to seeing her do something very different from that role. The TV advertisements for Good Behavior promised a very different character for her in the new series, and different it is.
Letty Dobesh is out on parole for good behavior, working at a waitress in a diner or coffee shop for a jerk of a boss when the series begins. At that point, we haven't seen her doing anything wrong, but her boss fires her when she has, in fact, done nothing wrong. We soon learn that she's a brazen thief with sobriety issues. She not only drinks, but uses drugs as well. She's also capable of conning people. And those are all reasons for Michelle Dockery to show us that she can act and then some. Not only does she speak with an American accent, she uses more than one type of American accent. Letty, for example, can affect a southern accent when she's wearing a wig and pretending to be someone other than herself.
In the course of her robbing hotel rooms while in cahoots with the front desk clerk, one man returns to his room with another man. Letty hides behind louvered closet doors and overhears a plot involving murder for hire. She does her best to keep the intended murder victim from being murdered – when it comes to crime, she is unwilling to step over the line between herself and killing other people. In the process of trying to prevent the crime, she is discovered by the murderer and ends up becoming his unwilling accomplice in a further murder. People who don't like "bad" language will not appreciate the language used in Good Behavior. Since it's on a cable channel, they use every vulgar word found in American English, though they do blank out all forms of the "f" word from the soundtrack and the closed captions. (It's easy enough to figure out what they've blanked out, since they don't blank out any other "dirty" words, and context provides all you need to know that a certain present participle used as an adjective is what's missing, for example.
So the story line itself is gritty, to say the least, and the character of Letty Dobesh is not wholly admirable – far from it. However, she makes for a very attractive anti-hero. The writing here is very convincing, as to both the story and the dialogue, and the characters are always interesting. The murderous bad guy, Javier, is played by Juan Diego Botto, a handsome Argentine man of slight build who appears to be much younger than his actual 41 years – and he's a perfect foil to the 35-year-old Michelle Dockery. So far, there has been a hint that Javier only undertakes to murder people who deserve it. Add that to his attractive appearance, and it's hard to hate him completely, just as it's hard to like Letty completely. Sill, Javier is on the bad side of the mark, and Letty is doing her best to keep him from doing what he does, though so far, she has managed to fail in two separate incidents.
I note that Letty has a particularly nasty mother who is doing her best to make Letty's life as miserable as she can, primarily by preventing her from seeing her son. Letty's mother is a piece of work herself, a chain-smoking harridan with a low voice my mother would have called a "whiskey tenor".
There is an occasion in the second episode for Michelle Dockery to sing a song, which is not a bad thing. She sings very nicely, with a lovely alto voice that is never shrill. If she came out with an album of vocals, I'd buy it.
I was enrolled in the goings on by the third minute of watching the first episode and, after that, I was riveted to my TV screen. I didn't want to miss a single word of the dialogue, a single frame of the visuals, or a single detail of the plot. Me, I would have liked it a lot less if the story and the dialogue weren't as gritty as they are.
I can see why Michelle Dockery went forward with Good Behavior. I believe she wanted the chance to show an audience what she could do, acting wise, and she certainly is doing that and then some. Here is an actress who is willing to get her hands dirty and her elbows scraped, who must believe that a really practitioner of her profession is one who can take on any role and make the audience forget any past roles she's played.
Great show, not just a good one – and all the better because Michelle Dockery is so convincing as a woman who isn't completely bad, but certainly not what you'd call virtuous. Letty Dobesh wouldn't be half as interesting if she were.