This “pitch-black” comedy-drama was written by the much-celebrated playwright Jez Butterworth, and it’s not at all bad, said Barbara Ellen in The Observer.
The show, on Amazon Prime, is twisty, “clever, witty and surprising”; but “Corden is miscast, chiefly because he lacks the range to enliven his character”.
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Mammals is certainly clever and surprising, said Hugo Rifkind in The Times – yet I never quite fell for it. Amandine is “a little too much the sort of female character I thought men weren’t supposed to write any more”; and I found the Chanel subplot “flatly bizarre”. Still, there are some funny moments, including one that made me hoot out loud with laughter.
The show purports to be about fidelity – “how we define it, why we place so much importance on it and what happens when a party fails in it” – but having half-heartedly raised these issues, the series scarcely interrogates them, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. Still, “the basic story holds the interest well enough”, and Corden, though a bit “shouty”, proves he is “a better actor than is often remembered”.
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