The Eddy review – A haunt­ing melody that quick­ly fades

A per­son could cer­tain­ly look at Hol­ly­wood favourite Damien Chazelle tak­ing to Net­flix as some­thing of a direc­to­r­i­al time-out after the luke­warm recep­tion for his last fea­ture, 2018’s First Man. But pre­cious lit­tle about The Eddy, the new minis­eries he’s pro­duced and par­tial­ly direct­ed for the plat­form, sug­gests that he’s com­pro­mis­ing or tak­ing a beat with a one-for-them after a one-for-me.

He’s doing all the things he enjoys doing: doc­u­ment­ing blaz­ing-hot musi­cal per­for­mances with whip pans, guid­ing track­ing shots in and out of jazz clubs, lin­ger­ing on facial close-ups while peo­ple weigh their dreams with against the cost of real­is­ing them. Chazelle’s unmis­tak­able fin­ger­print has not been smudged by his new stream­ing overlords.

But even if he’s got the same moves, even if he’s revis­it­ing his pet themes, the notice­able absence of an inef­fa­ble cin­e­mat­ic qual­i­ty sets this apart from the rest of his oeu­vre. His ambi­tions come across as small­er and hum­bler in the two episodes he helmed, penned-in by bud­get or resources or per­haps a greater inter­est in his upcom­ing fea­ture, Baby­lon. Cre­ator-writer Jack Thorne has adopt­ed his more well-known collaborator’s voice as the tone pre­dom­i­nant­ly inform­ing this series, and while he wears it well, it appears slight­ly off-brand after a few episodes.

Raw tal­ent pro­pels the show on a scene-by-scene basis, com­ing both from the cast and the line­up of vir­tu­osos rip­ping through the many musi­cal num­bers. André Hol­land belongs to both groups as Elliot Udo, pro­pri­etor of the Paris club that lends the series its title and a reg­u­lar onstage, where he blows a trum­pet, clar­inet, or just about any oth­er instru­ment he lays hands on.

His lit­tle tem­ple to jazz faces the expect­ed chal­lenges, name­ly that no one cares about that genre of music any­more and money’s accord­ing­ly got­ten tighter than tight. To com­pli­cate mat­ters fur­ther, his estranged teenage daugh­ter Julie (Amand­la Sten­berg) turns up on his doorstep to chal­lenge his work-life bal­ance. She’s got aspi­ra­tions all her own, as does the allur­ing jazz singer Maja (Joan­na Kulig, a well-honed expert from her role in Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War).

Thorne’s influ­ence comes across stronger in the lat­er episodes, which set­tle com­fort­ably into a reg­is­ter more lega­to than the always-on Chazelle can occu­py. Favour­ing a down­beat smooth­ness in his musi­cal pas­sages, rein­forced by vis­it­ing direc­tor Hou­da Benyam­i­na (of the superb Romani-ban­lieue dra­ma Divines), he suc­ceeds in repli­cat­ing the seduc­tive soul-sick­ness of jazz and blues.

This mode proves an ide­al fit for Hol­land and the exas­per­a­tion he can project from his eyes or his body lan­guage, even as he’s forced to deal with nar­ra­tive obsta­cles that do lit­tle more than pro­long this minis­eries to eight episodes.

By the time that a crim­i­nal scheme inter­sect­ing with Elliot’s for­tunes starts to takes shape, the plot resem­bles padding in a show that excels at cre­at­ing and inhab­it­ing mood. It’s a potent high, to be wan­der­ing the ser­pen­tine night­time streets of Gay Paree, let­ting the caress of a horn enve­lope you with its minor-key noodling, all of it cap­tured with grainy film­strip cin­e­matog­ra­phy. (Which looks uncan­ny and per­verse when streamed on a buffer­ing wifi con­nec­tion, though that’s an entire­ly sep­a­rate issue.)

The moments of tran­scen­dence that ele­vate Chazelle’s work are present, but Thorne can only repro­duce them spar­ing­ly, and he has no dis­cernible autho­r­i­al sig­na­ture to fill the rest of the wide can­vas avail­able to him. To con­clude with an oblig­a­tory musi­cal metaphor, he’s got the chops all right, but he’s no soloist.

The Eddy is avail­able on Net­flix from 8 May.