To my mind, there is one thing the US version of The Office did better than the BBC original, created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. This, I assure you, is a big deal because I worship at the altar of those flawlessly written British episodes. The one thing I actually prefer about the American version is John Krasinski’s smile to the camera.
It isn’t original, of course. The mockumentary format demands that characters occasionally react for the camera—throwing an eyeroll, a sigh, a smirk—instead of just the characters around them. From Phoebe Waller-Bridge on Fleabag to Sofia Vergara on Modern Family, we’ve seen many a version. While Martin Freeman is super as the exasperated Tim Canterbury in the original The Office, he’s too resigned to his lot, despairing even as he breaks the fourth wall, as if it can’t be helped.
Krasinski’s Jim Halpert, on the other hand, mugs for the cameras as if eager to include anyone in sight, from those holding the camera to those editing the footage—not to mention a possible audience. He really wants to let us in on the joke.
Jim’s lopsided “oops” face has been my gold standard, but the genre might have a new champion. The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins, a crackling new comedy streaming in India on JioHotstar, features Daniel Radcliffe as a disgraced documentarian trying to capture the complex life of a disgraced football player, and Radcliffe wears a desperate, feverish incredulity on his face as he looks at the camera. His vantage point is unique because he’s both behind and in front of the camera, and he needs us to buy in. His eyebrows, his face, the veins on his neck all seem to be asking us, the viewers, whether we can believe what we’re seeing or hearing. Or is he the only one taking crazy pills?
It’s a fair question, because footballer Reggie Dinkins—who lost his career after mistaking a phone call from an on-air TV interviewer for a phone call from his gambling bookie—is played by the one and only Tracy Morgan.
Morgan is the sort of chaotic comedian who perpetually appears to be mid-breakdown as if he can say anything at any point. Thanks to his work on 30 Rock where he played erratic movie star Tracy Jordan, it’s hard to imagine this performer ever being constrained by a mere script. In this new series—created by 30 Rock co-showrunner Robert Carlock—everything Morgan says feels spontaneous and unrehearsed and outtake-y.
That’s what makes it gold. (That’s also what makes it unwise to watch Morgan in action while, say, trying to drink water. Fear the spittake.)
The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins parodies the sports documentary genre, and the first glimpse of Dinkins watching game footage on his iPad instantly reminds us of Michael Jordan in the magnificent The Last Dance (Netflix). It also, however, parodies self-serious documentary filmmakers, with Radcliffe playing an Oscar-winner who had a Hollywood meltdown and is now trying to capture—or confabulate—a character-study that will bring him back to the limelight.
The gags are constant, with Radcliffe’s Arthur Tobin hailing from the “University of Maryland Centre for Documentary, Anime and Pornography” and having directed the star-studded Imagine video that came out during covid. He says things like “Interviews are like jazz. You have to improvise, feel it out”—before then starting, embarrassingly, to scat.
Dinkins may not be entirely sure what a documentary is—he has picked out a famous samurai sword for a climactic action scene—but there are times it becomes clear that he has watched a lot of television. “Zoom in on me, dramatically,” he instructs the cameras in one episode, and in another he is outraged by Tobin’s efforts to deconstruct his footballing origin-story: “Why are you interrogating the myth?”
The supporting characters are a bagful of mixed nuts. Erika Alexander is sharp as Monica, Dinkins’s ex-wife and business manager, frustrated by the dumb men in front of and behind the cameras but also indulgent. Bobby Moynihan shows off his considerable screaming talent as Rusty, Dinkins’s best friend, a defiantly loyal goofball. Precious Way stars as Dinkins’s fiancée Brina, a content-creator who shouldn’t be taken lightly. When she wants to explain something boring to the cameras, she switches on an ASMR voice.
Despite these weirdos, The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins is very much a two-hander: the footballer and the filmmaker, people currently loathed within their respective circles, people who need to reclaim their reputations and don’t know how. Watch the series for Morgan and Radcliffe being silly in mortifying and glorious ways, even as they lampoon sports documentaries and reality television, as well as those who make—and binge—them.
It takes a long time to make a documentary. It takes a long time for a crew to find their footing, for the makers to embed themselves within the subject’s life, for the narrative hook to emerge. The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins appears deceptively one-note as it starts, but holds a lesson in not being judgemental. Even idiots, it reminds us, hold multitudes. Everyone on the show evolves in surprising ways. Between the footballer and the filmmaker, only one has read Moby Dick and it isn’t the one you’d expect.
Now imagine me throwing a self-satisfied smirk at you, dear reader. Oops.
Streaming Tip Of The Week:
All seven fantastic seasons of 30 Rock, created by Tina Fey, can now be streamed on Netflix. One of the most influential comedies in modern television, the satire on the entertainment industry stars Fey alongside Tracy Morgan, Jane Krakowski and a magnificent Alec Baldwin. Watch—or rewatch—this now.
Raja Sen is a critic, screenwriter and columnist. His first play, a murder mystery called The Simla Affair, recently opened in Delhi. He is currently writing a horror film.