With its parade of sadsacks stuck in the modern world of love and sex, Joe Swanberg’s show might be the most Netflixy programme yet. But it has some very starry turns – and when it loosens up, it’s undeniably charming

Push through. That’s my advice to anyone who decides to give Easy a whirl. Joe Swanberg’s anthology series premieres on Netflix this week, and it seems quite determined to repel most of its audience in the first few minutes. Unless you equate long group discussions about sexual motivation in traditional heteronormative relationships with top-notch post-work funtimes, your first encounter with Easy will likely make your heart sink a little.

But push through. Because once it loosens up and stops trying to single itself out as an Important Intellectual Work, Easy is a good show, sometimes bordering on great.

A series of eight half-hour episodes, bound by geography alone, Easy might win the prize for the most Netflixy show ever made. Like Love and Master of None and Bojack Horseman and Lady Dynamite before it, it’s a comedy-drama that features a parade of flawed, self-interested sadsacks forlornly trying to navigate through a modern tangle of love and sex and culture.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The first encounter with Easy, in which it tries to single itself out as an Important Intellectual Work. Photograph: Zac Hahn/Netflix

(Incidentally, at this point, Netflix is making so many shows that riff on this exact theme that I’m starting to worry about whoever’s commissioning them. What could have happened to them, to make them so sad? A nice holiday in the country, that’s what they need, with a pile of books and a router that’s been smashed with a hammer.)

At least with Easy you can draw comfort from the fact that it’s being brought to you by an expert. Swanberg has based his entire career around these themes. He’s carved out a low-key aesthetic through micro-budgeted, heavily improvised films like Drinking Buddies and Happy Christmas, and Easy feels like an extension of that.

These aren’t so much episodes as sketches. Narratively they tend to wander around, taking their time before they eventually home in on a point. The second episode, for example, seems to predominantly be about two lesbians discussing veganism, but it isn’t until halfway through that things coalesce and settle on a direction.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Marc Maron plays a barely-concealed version of himself in Easy. Photograph: Scott Garfield/Netflix

The most successful episodes are the ones that contain the least amount of fat. The best of the bunch is the fifth episode, where Marc Maron plays a barely-concealed version of himself; an artist who pushes loved ones away by including them in his work. His career is going nowhere, then he meets a selfie-obsessed student and things progress from there. It is the perfect story for a show like Easy. Within half an hour we’ve met the characters, established a world, travelled through three broad beats of a story and said goodbye again.

If the whole series had the focus of Maron’s episode, Easy would make countless end-of-year best-of lists. However, it has plenty of dips along the way. One episode is about a man struggling to balance his impending fatherhood with his brother’s madcap business ideas. But, given that the brother is played by Dave Franco, and the business idea is an illegal artisanal small-batch brewery, you just spend half an hour wishing you could punch Dave Franco in the face.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Orlando Bloom and Malin Ackerman decide to have a threesome. Photograph: Patrick Wymore/Netflix

Similarly, the starriest episode of the series – where Orlando Bloom and Malin Ackerman decide to have a threesome – is derailed by the uncomfortable smarminess of the leads. Easy is a small series about small stories told quietly, and having Legolas acting smug front and centre feels unnecessarily distracting. That said, though, every single episode contains moments of undeniable charm, even one where you have to watch Orlando Bloom crawl over naked bodies for what feels like an eternity.



Hopefully Easy will get renewed as and when Swanberg feels like making new episodes. It’s a handy asset for him to have, a repository for orphans and tangents and ideas that won’t fit into his films. In fact, Netflix should think about dishing this sort of thing out to other filmmakers. If Swanberg can take such a loose bundle of half-thoughts and turn it into something as enjoyable as Easy, imagine what someone like Wes Anderson or Alexander Payne could do.

• Easy is on Netflix from 22 September