Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Avenue 5’ Season 2 on HBO MAX, Where The Luxury Ship Is Even More Lost In Space

Veep and I’m Alan Partridge creator Armando Iannucci’s sharp space comedy Avenue 5 returns to HBO Max for its second season after a round of pandemic-related production delays. (Iannucci has also sworn in the press that a third season is in the works.) It’s 40 years in the future, and luxury tours and travel to outer space is a thing. But it’s fraught with the same messiness of the human condition and people – and people in power – being generally awful toward one another that we’re all accustomed to here in the present. And all of that has been compounded, now that the titular space liner is operating off course, without comms, and facing shortages of food and vital resources.

AVENUE 5: SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “4 weeks to go!” a sign fashioned from cardboard and rocketship stickers proclaims alongside personal testimonials to Karen (Rebecca Front), who the bulk of Avenue 5’s passengers still believe is responsible for course-correcting the ship’s voyage home.

The Gist: That is decidedly not the case, of course. It’s been months since the events of last season, but Captain Ryan Clark (Hugh Laurie) still hasn’t told the passengers that, as corporate customer relations flack Matt Spencer (Zach Woods) reminds him, they’ll be “stuck on this elegant space finger for nearly a decade.” Ryan would rather drink champagne, eat meals of reconstituted eel protein masquerading as chicken, and avoid responsibility. He was supposed to be a figurehead in all of this captaining, anyway, right? Brought in by goofus zillionaire Herman Judd (Josh Gad) to look the part. But now everything’s gone sideways. Matt and Rav Mulcair (Nikki Amuka-Bird) try to make Ryan listen to reason, and level with the passengers about the duration and dwindling food supply, while Judd laughs off the shortages and does what he’s best at, which is deflecting blame.

Frank Kelly (Andy Buckley, The Office), Karen’s husband, is running a cooking show out of his cabin that highlights improvisational cuisine. “It sounds crazy,” he tells his streaming audience, “but crazy happens when you crank up The Frank.” But Frank has also subjected Karen to deceptive sequestering, which is actually crazy. In the boardroom, Rav lays out her survival plan for the captain, Judd, ship’s engineer Billie McEvoy (Lenora Crichlow), and ex-astronaut Spike Martin (Ethan Phillips). The ship’s population will split into two groups, above and below deck. “The Guaranteed” will be fed, while “The Pioneers,” sealed into steerage, “will be given a chance to manifest their own ‘destiny.’”

But there isn’t much time to contemplate that insane scenario, or even a more human solution, because the delay in announcing, um, the delay has only caused more commotion. As the slick Avenue 5 soap opera continues to air back on earth, Iris is confronted in Judd Mission Control by Lucas (Arsher Ali), who works for The Office of the Other President of the United States (TOTOPOTUS). His suspicion that Iris and Judd conspired to cut off communication to Avenue 5 is proven true, and when the link is re-established, Lucas asks her to stay while the staff is banished. It seems like everyone on earth will soon know of the foundering Avenue 5, which won’t matter at all in light of its latest calamity: meddlesome kids visiting the control room managed to push the ship even further off course, this time straight into the sun.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There’s some of Avenue 5’s satiric mirror on real life society in Gregg Daniels and Steve Carrell’s Space Force (Netflix), which also recently returned for a second season, though that show emphasizes workplace comedy over Avenue’s more cutting interpersonal humor. No, the truest comparison here might be a return to Iannucci’s Veep in how the humor of Avenue 5 meshes completely into its larger narrative.

Our Take: If anything, the delay between season one and season two of Avenue 5 has only exacerbated its penchant for salty wit. The ship’s elites use their knowledge of impending peril for all as a tool to retain their standing and access to resources – the captain ordering bottle after bottle of champagne in order to impress the passenger he flirts with, a mother (and wife, it turns out) whose children he offers a ship’s tour instead of the truth. Judd, the incompetant rich guy and space travel mogul – that description would seem to hold for more than a few of our own society’s top percenters – has spent the ensuing months veering off course growing out his ridiculous hairdo and rejecting accountability with each interaction. And Billie, whose competence as an engineer is one of the only things keeping everyone alive, nevertheless seems detached from the emergency, in the same way that Frank distracts himself with DIY cooking and low-level human confinement. Nobody on this ship wants to face any kind of truth, which is only going to conflagrate an already untenable situation. It’s likely that Rav’s plan for “industrial slaughter” to save the ‘Guaranteed’ won’t be implemented. But what’s left behind is rife for corrosive, black-hearted humor as the Avenue 5 cruises into resource-depleted oblivion.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode of season two, anyway.

Parting Shot: With news of the eight-year misdirection leaking out in all of the worst and most spontaneous ways, the ship is in panic mode as Ryan tries to vaguely reassure a throng of freaked out passengers. But even if he had the capacity for sincerity, the captain’s speech being interrupted by Billie’s announcement that Avenue 5 is now on a collision course with the sun isn’t good for morale. “A dangerous situation is being taken under control,” a recorded message intones, and Ryan seals himself onto the bridge.

Sleeper Star: Midway through its first episode, season two of Avenue 5 takes a bizarre, uproarious dip into life back on Earth, where Iris Kimura (Suzy Nakamura) is a guest on “Upbeat Downbeat,” a TikTok-styled talk show featuring inane viewer input and outrageous eating challenges that’s hosted by Dawn Djopal, played brilliantly by Lucy Punch.

Most Pilot-y Line: Matt and Rav are brainstorming ways to spin news of the ship’s crisis-lengthened voyage as gently as possible.

“What if we used Frank to tell the passengers about the 8 years?”

“Frank, the guy who made a haggis in a condom?”

“Yeah, it was delicious. His show has reach, right? We could use him to help the passengers acclimate to the coming blunder-fuck.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. With its stream of jokes hurling along at roughly the speed of light, Avenue 5 packs its half-hour episodes with laughs and a kind of manic absurdity that’s well-positioned to carry this comedy in whatever direction its hapless luxury space liner is pushed in next.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges