Jeff Daniels and Diane Lane rarely put in anything less than stellar performances, but the Emmy winner and Oscar nominee are rarely as good as they are in Netflix‘s adaptation of Tom Wolfe‘s A Man in Full.
In a fortnight that has seen the premieres of Hulu’s Lily Gladstone and Riley Keough starring Under the Bridge, the Elisabeth Moss spy thriller FX series Veil, HBO’s The Sympathizer, based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize winner and a third season of the still wonderfully wicked Hacks launching today on Max, executive producers Regina King and David E. Kelley have put a real winner on the track for Netflix with A Man in Full.
On any other show, the never better Daniels as a pugnacious Atlanta real estate tycoon Charlie Croker on the brink of bankruptcy, and Lane as his revitalized razor-sharp ex-wife Martha would be more than enough of a payoff.
As much of a fan you may or may not be of the New Journalism pathfinder’s much delayed second novel, or any of Wolfe’s other work fiction or non-fiction, I’m not going to recite the story chapter and verse, the book has been out for almost three decades, you either know it or you don’t. Leave it at this, Croker and his New South empire is in the hole to the banks for almost $1.5 billion, with a personal debt of $600 million.
The stakes are real at the top, and become even more so at the bottom once the incarceration machine starts to swallow characters up.
Kicking off with some incredibly well considered Shania Twain and including a certain stable coitus scene, the sweeping six-episode saga directed by Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globe winner and One Night in Miami… helmer King, and showrun by small screen maestro Kelley, this A Man in Full is a splendid thing to see indeed. The sprawling tome may have been set in the last superpower era of the 1990s, but this variation of A Man in Full, which has Thomas Schlamme directing three episodes too, is very much in the America of 2024 and an unsteady landscape.
Square in the stinging intersection of urban politics, commerce, race, demographics and rivalry, A Man in Full the miniseries has many options to offer with a superlative cast, including a literal show stopping Lucy Liu.
With much of the fat trimmed off Wolfe’s 742-page 1998 book, this A Man in Full also has the exceptional Bill Camp, the nuanced Tom Pelphrey, and Sarah Jones. Jon Michael Hill, Sundance winner Chanté Adams, and Emmy nominee William Jackson Harper are among the core cast too.
Then there is Aml Ameen.
Hot off portraying MLK Jr in last year’s Rustin, the British actor’s role here as Croker’s corporate fixer tentatively finding his soul in the dank marsh of the criminal justice system is a coup de maître. As much as Daniels’ thick Georgia accent, football legend past and appetite for all things gold and that glitter fuels the miniseries, it is Ameen’s Roger White that illuminates the inner and external drama as too many men try to let the Big Red dog out, as the script says.
This early in the latest round of awards season, it is foolish to put too much of a spotlight on any one performance or series. At the same time, with all the talent on both sides of the camera in A Man in Full, it would be equally foolish to bet against King, Kelley, Daniels, Laine and Ameen as well.
Towards the end of A Man in Full, as the bank puts the real squeeze on Daniels’ still swaggering Croker, the shrinking mogul is asked by his driver what Lane’s Martha wants out of a face-to-face meeting. “What they all want – me to stop being me,” Charlie croons from the fine leather seats of his Escalade. “F*ck that.”
Exactly.
This A Man in Full is exactly itself, and that’s a splendid thing indeed.
Title: A Man In Full
Network: Netflix
Premiere date: May 2, 2024 (6 episodes)
Showrunner/writer/executive producer: David E. Kelley
Directors/EPs: Regina King, Tommy Schlamme
EPs: Reina King, Matthew Tinker, Thomas C. Wolfe, Alexandra Wolfe
Cast: Jeff Daniels, Tom Pelphrey, Diane Lane, Lucy Liu, William Jackson Harper, Aml Ameen, Sarah Jones, Bill Camp, Jon Michael Hill, Chanté Adams
Rating: TV-M
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