The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is Amy Sherman-Palladino’s period comedy-drama about a New York housewife who becomes a stand-up comedian, and it is the most verbally dense show of its decade. It premiered on Amazon Prime Video on March 17, 2017 and ran five seasons to May 2023, set in the late 1950s and early 1960s with a final season that flashes forward to later decades. It is a show about a woman finding her voice, made by a writer who never once doubted hers.
Trailer, via Prime Video.
Midge
It is 1958 Manhattan and Miriam “Midge” Maisel has everything she was supposed to want: the husband, the kids, the Upper West Side apartment. Then her life turns, and in the wreckage she discovers a talent she did not know she had, one that will carry her from the comedy clubs of Greenwich Village to Johnny Carson’s couch. Rachel Brosnahan plays her, and the performance is a marvel of timing. Midge talks the way the show writes, in paragraphs, and Brosnahan makes it sound like breathing.
Susie
Alex Borstein plays Susie Myerson, the club employee who becomes Midge’s manager, and she is the show’s other half. Susie is everything Midge is not, and the friendship between a pampered wit and a bitter hustler is the series’ real love story. Borstein’s exhaustion is the counterweight to Brosnahan’s speed, and the show is at its best when they are in a room together.
The Family
Tony Shalhoub plays Abe Weissman, Midge’s father, a mathematician whose rigidity the show slowly and lovingly dismantles, and Marin Hinkle plays Rose, her mother. Michael Zegen plays Joel, the husband, whose failure starts the story and who the show refuses to make a villain. Kevin Pollak and Caroline Aaron play Joel’s parents, and their volume is a running joke that keeps landing. Reid Scott’s Gordon Ford, the television host, dominates the final season.
The Look
The show is expensive and looks it. The costumes, the sets and the long tracking shots through clubs and department stores are Sherman-Palladino’s signature, and the craft is real. The period is a playground, and the show plays in it with total confidence.
Where It Falls Short
The speed is also the limit. Every character talks the same way, and a show where a Bronx club manager and an Upper West Side matron share a rhythm is a show that has chosen style over voice. Midge’s rise is charmed in ways the series does not always acknowledge, and her comedy, which the show insists is brilliant, is often merely brisk. The middle seasons sprawl, and the final season’s flashforwards answer questions the story would have been stronger leaving open.
The Verdict
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a dazzling, mannered, frequently wonderful show about ambition, built around two performers who could sell anything. It sold a lot. Not all of it was as good as it sounded.
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