Sex tapes, and toys, abound in the trailer for B.J. Novak’s The Premise
The anthology series, starring Daniel Dae Kim, Jon Bernthal, Tracee Ellis Ross, and more, debuts on FX On Hulu this fall
TV News B.J. Novak
The hook for B.J. Novak’s new FX anthology series, The Premise, is built right into the name: 6 individual episodes, all built around a big, beefy idea designed to provoke controversy and interest in equal measures. Like, “What if your lousy sex tape managed to catch a moment of intense police brutality?” “What if the father of a mass shooting victim decided to join the world’s biggest gun lobby—and his co-workers started getting nervous about all the weapons he’s carrying around?” And, “What if it was, in fact, really all riding on this butt plug?”
All of these premises—especially the butt plug one, from the episode that is, per FX itself, titled “Butt Plug”—are featured prominently in the new trailer for the series, which also plays up the other major thing the show has going for it. I.e., this is one hell of a cast: Tracee Ellis Ross, Daniel Dae Kim, Lola Kirke, Ayo Edebiri, Jon Bernthal, and more all lend their talents to the half-hour installments, all of which have been either co-written or directed by Novak, working with folks like Kitao Sakurai, Jia Tolentino, and Darya Zhuk.
FX listed all six of the titular premises in a press release for the show this afternoon, and they all sound similarly provocative: A popstar offers to have sex with the class valedictorian of a high school, spurring a renewed interest in the students’ educations; a woman drives herself to madness trying to please an anonymous online commenter; a rich businessman offers his old school bully a chance at redemption, or maybe revenge, by asking him to pitch “a very specific product” to his board of directors. (That’s the butt plug one; you could tell, couldn’t you?) At the risk of being reductive, the whole thing feels a little Black Mirror, albeit if Black Mirror exclusively took place in a world at our exact level of technological development. (Hence, presumably, the tagline: “An anthology of now.”)
The Premise debuts, with “Social Justice Sex Tape” and the Bernthal-starring “Moment Of Silence,” on FX’s FX On Hulu brand on September 16.
29 Comments
The hook for…The Premise, is built right into the name: 6 individual episodes, all built around a big, beefy idea designed to provoke controversy and interest in equal measures.So, the premise of The Premise is that each episode (and, indeed, all fiction) is based on a premise?
Also…. isn’t this broadly what a lot of anthology series do?
Yes! It is!
What this show presupposes is…maybe it presupposes something.
wiiiiiild cat
Of course Black Mirror opened with “The National Anthem”, the infamous episode where a kidnapper of a royal demands that the Prime Minister have sex with a pig on live television or he’ll kill the victim, so opening with butt plugs seems rather tame in comparison.
I will admit to a certain bias when it comes to B.J. Novak (don’t like him), but wow, in what world is something called “The Premise” not automatically pretentious?
You and me. It’s probably not fair, but I absolutely blame him for all of Mindy’s shitty male leads. Like, I’m watching s2 of Never Have I Ever (which is mostly good!) and every time Ben Gross opens his mouth, I hear BJ Novak’s voice, saying something very 90s edgelord.So unfair, but I can’t help it.
Novak has sort of acknowledged that S4 Ryan Howard was an exaggerated version of himself as written by his peers, but it was much less a mea culpa, and more an “Okay, you got me guys, sometimes I sound like that”, at least as I heard it. His personality has always felt a bit off to me, but I’m happy to concede that not only have I never met him, but have never heard anything bad about him, and the fact that he’s retained those professional friendships has to mean something. But yeah, I totally get that.
Does anyone else remember before The Dissolve, that you could order AV Club branded butt plugs autographed by Nathan Rabin?Fun times.
You might still be able to order one, if you ask Nabin nicely.
Now I’m picturing a line of ”Manic Pixie Dream Plugs”.
This is like Example #534 that there are too many shows on TV. We could easily trim 25-30 shows off of the various platforms and nobody would notice.Props to them on making Jon Bernthal look like a huge nerd, though.
This is like Example #534 that there are too many shows on TV. We could easily trim 25-30 shows off of the various platforms and nobody would notice.Props to them on making Jon Bernthal look like a huge nerd, though.
“Dear Mr. President, there are too many shows on TV nowadays. Please eliminate three. I am not a crackpot.”
Whenever I see B.J. Novak’s name I think of Bob Novak from CNN’s Crossfire, and when that’s combined with “sex toys,” I can’t sleep for a few days.
I know, I’m rock hard too.
You better Walk Hard then
People can change. Hold the baby.
“An anthology of NOW”. WTF does that even mean?
What if now but too much
Let me be the first to star that.
According to IMDB, this show was until recently entitled “Platform”.I guess they didn’t want it confused with that Netflix dystopian food elevator movie.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10731840/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
they need to drop the shit and just call these what they are: Hulu shows. leave FX out of it altogether. when was the last time a new ““FX”” show was actually released on FX? been bugging me since Devs