Jack Thorne
The Eddy

The Eddy is a miniseries that came out recently on Netflix. It consists of 8 episodes of approximately 45 minutes each.

The Eddy tells the story of Elliot Udo (André Holland who played Kevin in the multi-award-winning Moonlight from 2016), a former American jazz pianist who, once retired, opens a jazz club in Paris.

Farid is his business partner and also his best friend. Elliot takes care of the music, composing jazz music for his band that performs in the club, while Farid manages the accounting. However, Farid gets into big trouble with the local underworld and (within a few minutes of the start) meets his demise.

Elliot was completely unaware of his partner-friend's shady dealings and finds himself in a world of trouble. To complicate matters, his 16-year-old daughter Julie arrives from the United States (she is Amanda Stenberg, an actress-model of African-American-Danish origin, known for being in The Hunger Games). Julie is a difficult girl with a recent past of abandonment, sex, and drugs and will cause all sorts of trouble. Julie is amazing; she is the raw gem of the series, worth watching just for her.

The screenplay is by Jack Thorne and the first two episodes were directed by Damien Chazelle (the director of Whiplash and La La Land). Therefore, a "musical" director uses a refined style aimed at realism, focusing on the proximity of places and bodies, with a rough and gritty cut designed to enhance the spartan yet refined environment of a jazz club, exploring glimpses of a proletarian and multicultural Paris. In this regard, the language used is also interesting, consisting of French, English, Arabic, and banlieue slang.

The Eddy unfolds and unravels on three fronts. The characters (each episode is titled after one of the characters), the jazz music, and the criminal subplot, which although on paper is supposed to inject a dose of tension and adrenaline, remains the least convincing of the three.

Perhaps it is jazz that is the most successful ingredient. Many well-played and engaging pieces are presented; I am not an expert in this musical genre, but the type of jazz chosen is quite accessible and decidedly enjoyable. I don't even know if these pieces were composed specifically for the series, perhaps they were. And again, it will be the music that provides "emotional" moments of lyricism and poetry, of joy and freedom in a wild and refined blend typical of jazz.

I don't know what following The Eddy is having; it's not the classic "commercial" Netflix product, but deep down I hope they create a second series to see how it ends...