Should You Play With Doll & Em?

What Is This Thing?

Doll has just had a bad breakup and needs to get out of the U.K. Fortunately, her best friend since childhood is the actress Emily Mortimer, who's making a movie in Los Angeles and can employ Doll as a live-in friend/assistant!

When Is It On?

HBO will be showing two episodes back to back for three weeks (starting tonight), Wednesdays at 10 PM ET.

Why Was It Made Now?

HBO has recently been on a tear with britcoms -- see: Hello Ladies, Family Tree (or actually don't, because you can't, they both got cancelled). And sitcoms in which celebrities play "themselves" have long been a network staple -- see: Curb Your Enthusiasm, Extras. So this is right in the middle of that Venn diagram.

What's Its Pedigree?

Boy, I hope you know co-creator Mortimer from more than just her thankless role as Mackenzie on The Newsroom! She's starred in Match Point, Our Idiot Brother, and an arc in the first season of 30 Rock ("My bones!"). And though this show is her first credit as a writer, she undoubtedly learned a lot about creating believable female relationships as one of the stars of Nicole Holofcener's wonderful second film, Lovely & Amazing. I know Dolly Wells as a guest star in a couple of episodes of Peep Show, but she's apparently British sketch royalty, having worked with Noel Fielding and in beloved sitcoms Spy, Free Agents, and The I.T. Crowd. (Also listed as a producer is Alessandro Nivola, Mortimer's foxy husband.)

...And?

There's a scene early in the first episode, after Dolly's just arrived in L.A., when she and Emily are lying on couches drinking wine in Emily's rented house, and Dolly, in a sort of joking way, asks what she's supposed to do for Emily in her new capacity as Emily's personal assistant. Is she supposed to get Emily coffee? Emily scoffs that no, of course she's not, unless she's getting coffee for herself. And then, over the next couple of minutes, she "casually" tells Dolly what her coffee order actually is, as it dawns on Dolly that she isn't actually just going to be on the payroll as Emily's buddy. Then Emily mentions that if Dolly's hungry, there are some leftovers in the fridge, and there's a long, long, long silence as Dolly figures out that Emily's waiting for her to go heat it up for them. The scene is subtle and elegant and sooooooo deadpan, but it sets up the tension for at least the next couple of episodes: what is their relationship going to be like, now that this imbalance of power is part of it? Fortunately, the second episode lets Dolly be more than a sad sack, as a fancy Hollywood party winds down with both ladies in the hot tub with an attractive guy who puts the moves on both of them (separately and together) and the two hilariously undermine one another in front of him as only people who've known each other their whole lives can.

...But?

The movie Emily's working on is a period Mob drama, with Emily playing kind of a female Godfather (though writer-director Mike -- Joan Of Arcadia's Aaron Himelstein -- bristles at the Coppola comparisons whenever they come up, which is often), and as the show gets rolling, the Hollywood satire starts to crowd out the much more interesting interpersonal stuff between the titular characters. Also, you know who's not funny as "himself"? John Cusack.

...So?

In terms of "action" or "situations," there's not a lot? So your enjoyment of the show will depend on whether you're on board with the titular characters, and you'll be able to determine that after Episode 1. But the friendship between the leads felt very lived-in to me, and I loved that the era Wells and Mortimer love each other enough to be this mean on camera. Anyway, it's ultimately only a three-hour commitment on your part, and it'll be over two weeks from now if you get on board. If you've ever been a woman who's friends with a woman or even just known one, there's probably something here you can recognize and appreciate.