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In the blurb promoting Government Cheese, Apple TV+ describes it as “surrealist”. It isn’t, but it does have plenty of what is becoming the streamer’s signature style. Is your dramedy quirky, kooky and kind of cartoony? Is it set mid-century in the US, away from the big cities, where humble but smarter-than-average folk arch deadpan eyebrows at unusual events? Yes? You’ve got a full-season commission! Don’t worry about an engaging premise or a coherent narrative – we just want those zany indie vibes.
We are in the San Fernando valley, California, 1969. After a riot breaks out during a flood, a burglar and petty fraudster, Hampton Chambers (David Oyelowo), is released from prison, strolling back into his home town of Chatsworth in his one sharp suit, with the rolling, bouncing gait of a born huckster who has fatally high self-esteem. While incarcerated, he has invented a self-sharpening drill, the proceeds from which he hopes will aid him as he reconnects with his family and goes straight. But his neglected wife and sons are frosty and he needs to earn money faster than his supposed wonder tool can make it, so a return to criminality beckons – bringing with it all the lying and cheating that alienated his loved ones in the first place.
Government Cheese looks beautiful: the cars, the dresses, the rotary telephones and chunky appliances, the hairstyles, the shoes and the panelled interiors. All are sumptuous, whipping us back to a time when objects were reassuringly weighty, the air was clear and hope for the future came in quarter-gallon cups. If you turn the sound off, the co-creator Paul Hunter, known for music videos and adverts, has nailed it.
But, a little like Apple TV+ goofballs such as The Big Door Prize, Physical, Palm Royale and Hello Tomorrow!, Government Cheese lacks the storytelling substance to go with the attractive surfaces. It’s not even trying to go anywhere with purpose: it would rather just mosey eccentrically.
There is a touch of Wes Anderson, a dollop of I’m a Virgo’s Boots Riley and a whisper of the Coen brothers in the way characters greet reality with an angular insouciance. Hampton’s wife, Astoria (Simone Missick), has been left to run the household alone and has been the victim of some of her husband’s deceptions, but instead of receiving him with anger, she gives him a bemused, robotic smirk and pours herself another cocktail, mixed roughly in the glass. Their elder son, Harrison (Jahi Di’Allo Winston), is hostile, but his resentment is a caricature of late-teen grumpiness; in any case, he is more concerned with obtaining an eagle feather to service his interest in the local Indigenous Americans.
Then there is Hampton’s other son, Einstein (Evan Ellison), who greets his father’s return with the cheerful news that he has turned down offers to study at Harvard and MIT because he is dedicating himself to pole vaulting, which he pursues on the front lawn. “I’m going to break the world record!” he says, before once again arcing miles under the bar.
Toss in a gang of bullying French-Canadian brothers who are intimidating in a left-field sort of way; Sunita Mani (Arthie from Glow) as a wise stranger who meets Hampton when she is stuck in a hatch (for several minutes, she is just a pair of legs); an unreliable partner in crime who convinces Hampton to help him rob a synagogue; and the fact that the town’s primary employer is Rocketcorp, a manufacturer of gleaming chrome gadgets for the space race, and you have a giant pile of random whimsy.
The cast do nothing wrong, particularly Oyelowo. As the captain of this paper ship, he is exceptional, often telling the whole story – such as it is – with his facial expressions in closeup. He embodies the restless optimism of a man who refuses to accept the hand he has been dealt, instead using every situation as inspiration for a new scheme, which is guaranteed to be more outlandishly unwise than the last one. But Oyelowo can’t use his formidable skills to dig for a deeper meaning: with the drama always preferring a weird coincidence or exotic digression to a meaningful interaction between characters, there isn’t anything for him to find.
The title refers to a processed cheese distributed by the US government since the second world war to feed poor people and which is mentioned in a line of dialogue. As she observes Hampton tinkering confidently with crude metalwork in the garage, Astoria recalls that he inherited his resourcefulness from his mother, who “made the best sandwiches out of nothing but government cheese and white bread”. The show could have benefited from a bit of old Mrs Chambers’s simple approach – as it is, it’s all garnish and no food.
