Subscribe to Our Craft Newsletter, Top of the Line: This Week, Giddyup ‘Ponies’
- "Ponies" is a new '70s spy romp TV show with Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson that offers smart, character-based storytelling and creatively colored costumes.
Hi y’all. Welcome back to a snowy Top of the Line newsletter from NYC. With all due respect to the suspense of Oscar season, which has reached its Phase 1 peak just before all the nomination announcements next week, there is some really good TV this week, and we simply must talk about it.
“The Pitt” Season 2 is battling injuries, AI, and time itself. “The Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” has enough poop jokes that it actually swings back around to getting me to care about the world of “Game of Thrones.” The cutthroat financial world of “Industry” has returned in Season 4 with even more shade for the British class system, and (somehow) even better coats. And then there is “Ponies,” the new ’70s spy romp created by David Iserson and Susanna Fogel and anchored by Emilia Clarke and Haley Lu Richardson.
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I’m not allowed to insert the Gordon Ramsay meme about good food into the body of the newsletter, but that is how I feel in my heart about this show. It! Has! Everything! A really sharp structure, the most fun and funniest needle drops this side of “Reservation Dogs” — really fascinately researched, creatively colored costumes, and production design that are a breath of fresh air for the spy genre, and perfect Trojan Horses (Pony Pun Count: 1) for smart, character-based storytelling.
The craft isn’t demanding to be noticed — besides the playful screen wipes added in the edit, which are a delight and more people should be using them — but it is still incredibly well done, and I’ll have some pieces next week about the work that went into the production design, costumes, and really clever perspective that the camera takes. And Emilia Clark is so funny, y’all. It is a mark of how much society has broken down, and a sign that we are living in a fallen world, that it’s taken this long for a project to really take advantage of Emilia Clarke being really funny. The newsletter’s Call To Action™ is to giddy yourself up (Pony Pun Count: 2) and go watch “Ponies” on Peacock.
My obsession with tonally playful television and wine-buddy spies aside, we’ve had some stories around the Craft section this week that are equally fun. The great Chris O’Falt is all over “Industry’s” latest schemes in London, with a new Toolkit interview with creators Mickey Downs and Konrad Kay . I especially liked hearing about the ways in which they were able to inject a new kind of humor through the “Tender” crew without having to go to Silicon Valley to do it, because why would you when you can avoid it? We’ve also had some additional “Marty Supreme” and “Avatar: Fire and Ash” coverage, because Jim Hemphill and I cannot rein it in (Pony Pun Count: 3).
One of my favorite recent Toolkit moments, though, is getting to hear director Park Chan-wook talk about “No Other Choice,” which is maybe the film from last year I walked out of most thinking, “Finally, some good fucking food.” We have one more piece up from that conversation as well, about the design of the house that Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) is willing to kill for. There’s some fascinating context about the Korean middle class embedded (quite literally) into the concrete facade of the exterior and the layout of the greenhouse that, if you’ve seen the film, takes such a turn over the course of Man-su’s quest to subvert the hiring process. Highly recommend that you check it out.
Next week should be a big one, with the run-up to Sundance and our annual camera survey with it. I’m excited to share some of the results from that — the DPs who respond always go deeper than just the choice to use an Alexa 35, and if you’re at all interested in cinematography, there’s a lot to pick up from it. Stay safe in the meantime, y’all.
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