Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Creamerie’ On Hulu, Where An All-Female Society Gets Turned Upside-Down By One Of The Only Men Alive

What do TV writers have against men? Well, probably a lot; we deserve some derision. But there seems to be a mini-trend of shows about a post-apocalyptic world where all men have died. But where Y: The Last Man was a generally serious examination, the New Zealand series Creamerie is supposed to be funny. But is it, really?

CREAMERIE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “DAY 1.” Men are cheering and hugging in a locker room after winning a critical game. Then all of a sudden, one of the men starts coughing up blood.

The Gist: Eight years after a mystery virus killed every man on earth, three dairy farmers — Alex (Ally Xue), Jaime (J.J. Fong) and Pip (Perlina Lau) — are at a meeting of a cult-like organization called Wellness. They’ve managed to create a functioning society without men, and have even created a reproduction protocol, where Lane (Tandi Wright), the organization’s revered leader, picks mothers-to-be from a lottery.

Jamie is hoping to be part of that lottery; she has had a hard time in the eight years since both her husband and young son were killed by the virus. Of course, with the virus still there, if she ends up having a boy, she’ll likely lose that baby, too. Alex is one of the few people who doesn’t buy Lane’s philosophies; she not only jeers her at the gathering but throws Pip’s smoothie at her. But Lynley (Brynley Stent), the “Cuntstable”, as Alex calls her, is in a relationship with Alex. But whether the guard is her lover or not, she still knows she has to get a Bliss Ball in her neck.

The Bliss Ball drugs her for the prescribed sentence, which is five days. But she has left notes for herself — this isn’t her first rodeo with the punishment — that gives her instructions on how to cut it out. Meanwhile, Pip, catering a meeting for Lane, overhears Lane talking to the community’s doctor that sounds like they’re talking about genetic engineering the new babies in the community. Jamie goes to a service for her weekly orgasm, but she thinks about her dead husband in order to get herself at all interested in what’s going on.

After Alex goes missing after removing the Bliss Ball, Pip and Jamie go looking for her. When they get in their truck, though, they run over something. Alex comes back at that point and finds the person they hit. When she turns the person over, it turns out to be a man, the first one they’ve seen in eight years.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Creamerie has a similar apocalyptic theme as Y: The Last Man, but the way they treat it is supposed to be funnier. Though, as we’ll elaborate below, we’re not sure if it actually is any funnier.

Our Take: Creamerie was one of those shows that was hard to wrap our minds around as we watched the first episode. Created by its three stars along with Roseanne Liang, it’s concept is easy to grasp: It’s about a post-apocalyptic society of women that may not be all that it seems, which will soon learn that not every man on earth was wiped out like they thought. What was tough to wrap our minds around was the show’s tone.

It’s ostensibly a comedy, or maybe a dramedy. But the tone of the first episode was far more serious than we thought it would be during its first scenes (not the bloody part where the men are dying, but the meeting of the Wellness society). The idea is that the three dairy farmers — are they sisters? Are they even friends? — all have their own perspectives of how effective this society really is. They’ve bought into Lane’s philosophy to different degrees, from Alex’s defiance to Pip’s subservience.

But other than an occasional line, like Alex spewing the word “Cunstable,” most of what went on was serious. That’s different than us saying that the show was unfunny; what we’re saying is that it wasn’t even trying to be funny during most of the first episode. So when the show does do something funny, the tonal shift is more severe. The best dramedies can float from serious to hilarious pretty easily. It feels like the effort is more labored on Creamerie, at least to start.

Why are we harping on this? Because we know that there are earmarks of a comedy there, and Xue, Fong, Lau and Liang have created and starred in comedies in the recent past (Flat 3, Unboxed). So to see the first episode take itself so seriously was a bit confusing to us.

Perhaps as Bobby (Jay Ryan), the man that the trio discovers, gets incorporated into the story and they start looking for more male survivors, there will be funnier moments. But for now, the show left us feeling a bit bewildered and not at all engaged.

Sex and Skin: Besides Jaime thinking of her dead husband during her orgasm session, there’s remarkably little sex in the episode.

Parting Shot: After the farmers pull on Bobby’s beard to make sure it’s real, he shockingly wakes up.

Sleeper Star: The doctor is played by Rachel House, who does a remarkable amount of voice acting, especially for Disney (she played the grandmother in Moana, for instance). It’s always fun to see her in a live-action role and she never disappoints.

Most Pilot-y Line: The doctor reassures Jaime that if her embryo is a boy, what ends up dying is a “little piece of Y chromosome snot.” Eww.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The pedigree behind Creamerie makes us think that the show will straighten its tone out. But it does feel like, at least at first, that the show the creators set out to make didn’t exactly turn out the way they or their fans might have expected.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Creamerie On Hulu