Woody Allen, who hasn’t watched TV since Tonight Starring Jack Paar was canceled in 1962 (except for Hannah Montana, obviously), is the creator, star, and director of a TV show. The very begrudging creator, star, and director of a television show. “I kept saying I have no ideas for it, that I never watch television,” Allen said last year. “I don’t know the first thing about it. Well, this went on for a year and a half, and they kept making a better deal and a better deal.” After the third dump truck full of money pulled up to Allen’s Upper East Side townhouse, he came up with Amazon Video’s Crisis In Six Scenes.
The six-episode series is set — you won’t believe this — in the 1960s, and Allen plays — hold on to your Don Draper hat — a nervous guy named Sidney Muntzinger. “Crisis in Six Scenes is a comedy that takes place in the 1960s during turbulent times in the United States,” the official plot synopsis reads, “when a middle class suburban family is visited by a guest who turns their household completely upside down.” In the clip above, Sidney asks his barber to make him look like famous heartthrob James Dean; in another, shown exclusively at the Television Critics Association press tour, Sidney and Miley Cyrus’ unnamed character bicker about kitchen appliances. She calls him a “mindless, cowardly follower,” which sounds harsh, until you remember that Allen referred to his own show as a “catastrophic mistake.”
Amazon should use that for the pull quote. Anyway, catastrophic mistake or not, Crisis In Six Scenes premieres on September 30. Someone will have to tell Allen how it goes — the internet remains unavailable on typewriters.
