Maria Bamford stars as a fictionalized version of herself in this comedy, loosely based on what the dynamic comic and actress has accepted to be her life. The occasionally surreal episodes, refracted across multiple periods of the actor/comedian's life, tell the story of a woman who loses, and then finds, herself.
This odd, kaleidoscopic series from Maria Bamford is great, if you like twisted scripted comedy, the theme of mental illness, and hallucinogenic flights of fancy, which I do.
For a show whose central character is simultaneously reaching her breaking point, recovering from her breakdown, and trying to sort her life out post-breakdown, Lady Dynamite is very, very funny.
[Bamford's] brilliant new online series Lady Dynamite, which manages to take TV comedy another jolt forward, shows a version of her life that included her efforts in the comedy world as well as her struggles with mental health issues back in Duluth.
Maria Bamford -- her measured openness, her mingled fear and hope, her earnest desire to do good and to do well -- is the flame that gives Lady Dynamite's its warmth and its fire.
Lady Dynamite was a blast of technicolour goofiness. Characters turned into animals. There were cartoon interludes. Bamford's adorable pug spoke with the voice of Werner Herzog. Time and again, the joyful strangeness outweighed the fear.
As fodder for contemporary comedy, mental illness and the casual cruelty of Hollywood - not to mention thinly veiled autobiography - have been done death.
It's a show that follows the well-worn track of stand-up-comic-does-TV but it ambitiously seeks to subvert not just the sitcom genre, but more dangerously the stand-up-comic-does-TV sitcom genre. It's risky, but it pays off.
