TV review: Beef's second season is by numbers telly with none of the tension or elegance of the first
Beef Season 2 Picture: Netflix
Beef is back on Netflix for a second season. Or rather the idea is back. They have concocted a new set of ordinary people whose lives are consumed by a feud.
It’s not great, bar one saving grace — Carey Mulligan.
Mulligan plays an almost ridiculously English woman called Lindsay, married to Joshua, the manager of a middling country club that is being taken over by a new owner from Korea.
They are set against another, younger couple, Ashley and Austin, who work for Joshua at the country club. Ashley and Justin come across what looks like a violent fight between the other two and it goes from there.
We are told enough about the characters to get why they might be inclined to lose the rag. Lindsay is a failing interior designer and her husband Josh is worried he is going to lose his job under new owners. Ashley needs money for an operation and envies her boss. Justin is a college football star with his best years behind him.
It feels like telly by numbers, certainly for the male leads. Joshua has a gambling problem, Justin gets relationship advice from Reddit. There isn’t much more to them. Ashley is a bit more interesting. She starts out as reticent and eager to please, but is spitting fire by the end of the first episode.
Carey Mulligan’s Lindsay is pretty much spitting fire from the get go. She is riveting as a mannered English woman trying to hide her frustration and rage behind a wall of silly pillows and crushed velvet furniture. She makes for a great character, but probably in another show.
Here she just shows up the cracks in her fellow characters and the plot. And by plot I mean open up as many cans of worms as possible and see what happens. Lindsay flirts with the tennis trainer with ridiculous consequences. There is blackmail, fraud, and the ridiculous new plot line about a surgeon that crashes in out of nowhere.
It has none of the tension and elegance of season one, where the story turned the heat up slowly and watched the characters spiral into rage and rivalry. It was ridiculous, but it was credible. Here it’s plodding and patchy. Justin isn’t just annoying and unlikeable. He’s also not interesting, as if you asked AI to write a sweet narcissist who is a bit too much in love with his girlfriend. It’s hard to get audiences hooked on selfish characters, unless it’s in a comedy. They don’t manage it here. Except for Carey Mulligan’s character. And that isn’t enough.
