With ‘Government Cheese,’ Apple TV+ vaults into 1960s San Fernando Valley
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- David Oyelowo stars in a new series centered on Black family in Chatsworth.
- Absurd moments, family dysfunction, French Canadian mobsters and mishaps galore add up to amusing comic drama.
Set in a version, or a vision, of the northwest San Fernando Valley in 1969, “Government Cheese,” premiering Wednesday on Apple TV+, belongs to a class of visually striking comic dramas that slip in out of the naturalistic “real” world, while remaining emotionally coherent. I’m thinking of “Lodge 49” with which this show shares an aerospace company (and a … lodge), “Mrs. Davis” and “I’m a Virgo,” and certain seasons of “Fargo. “ If “Government Cheese” isn’t quite to the level, or the depth, of the best of these, it’s a kind of show I like very much, and plenty of good things are therein.
Created by Paul Hunter and Aeysha Carr, the series starts with the Chambers Brothers’ “Time Has Come Today” on the soundtrack, a musical pun because our hero is named Chambers — Hampton Chambers (David Oyelowo) — and he’s doing time at California Institution for Men in Chino for writing bad checks with “time added for assorted other misdeeds.” (I can’t swear that was the intention, but everything in “Government Cheese,” even the seemingly random parts, feels thoroughly thought out.)
He’s rough when we meet him there, two years before the main action of the series, but ripe for change; his Native American cellmate, Rudy (Adam Beach), suggests he talk to Gus (Mykelti Williamson), some sort of nondenominational quasi-cleric, who tells him, “To God we’re just pieces on a chessboard and he’s the master. … But if you don’t follow his path, God will f— you up.” Hampton leaves prison with a head full of scripture and plans for a self-sharpening drill, cooked up during his time in the machine shop.
‘Government Cheese’ is a surrealist comedy on Apple TV+ about a Black family living in the San Fernando Valley that’s based on co-creator Paul Hunter’s own family.
Hampton returns home to his family, unannounced, as if he were merely back from work. Wife Astoria (Simone Missick), working as a receptionist at an interior design firm, sighs uneasily. Younger son Harrison (Jahi Di’Allo Winston), who calls his father Hampton — “You’re not my father,” he says — has steeped himself in local native culture, thanks to a quasi-paternal friendship with Rudy, and dresses like Tom Laughlin in “Billy Jack” two years before that movie came out. He sports a feather Rudy gave him; eagles will be a motif in his storyline.
Only cheerful younger son Einstein (Evan Ellison), an eccentric, prophetically named genius who has decided to become a champion pole-vaulter, seems happy to see him. He calls Hampton “pop,” like David and Ricky did Ozzie. That they are the only Black family in their middle-class suburb is significant of nothing much, surprising given the tenor of the times, but that’s the suburbs for you.
Hampton has “a plan that will make our family the toast of Chatsworth.” But, says Astoria, “some of us have aspirations that are bigger than Chatsworth.” So there’ll be trouble.
Exiled by Astoria to the garage, Hampton fabricates his special drill as the family watches from afar. “Dad’s making something out of nothing,” says Einstein, impressed. “He’s like an alchemist.” (He will dub the drill, which works as advertised, the “Bit Magician.”)
Jon Hamm stars in this Apple TV+ drama as a fired hedge fund manager in crisis who resorts to stealing from his circle of friends to keep up his family’s lifestyle.
“His mother was the same way,” says Astoria. “She could make the best sandwiches out of nothing but government cheese and white bread.” And there is your title.
The focus of Hampton’s plans to sell his invention is a company called Rocket Corp (standing in for the real-world Rocketdyne, which had facilities in the hills above Chatsworth), also the focus of environmental protests.
To complicate matters — matters, of course, must be complicated — Hampton will learn that he’s in debt $2,000 for an unasked-for service from a crime family composed of seven brothers (French Canadian but straight out of “Fargo”) and that they would quite happily kill him if he doesn’t pay up, like, now. He doesn’t have the money, but his old friend Bootsy (Bokeem Woodbine) has a line on a job, by which he means a crime.
Throughout the series, Hampton will encounter various characters, some he knows, some just emerging from the underbrush or out of a vent — Sunita Mani, approachably mysterious, is a series highlight — who will guide or push or bully him along his way, as if he were a figure on a fairy tale quest. At one point he becomes the Biblical Jonah.
Ultimately any story that plays with form, as “Government Cheese” does, is itself about storytelling. Of the Jonah story, we learn from Rabbi Marty, played by Bob Glouberman, that in the end “nothing happens; it’s a cliffhanger, and nobody got around to finish the sequel. … It means you get to choose how you proceed next.” (That is certainly how they do it in television.)
One episode opens with a black-and-white low-budget revisionist movie western — titled “The Long Road Home,” after this series’ own theme — in which Harrison winds up as an extra. (Many westerns were shot in the rocky hills north of Chatsworth.) Another begins with an inexpert “A Day in the Life at Temple Hillel Public Access Film,” in which Rabbi Marty points out that the bound Torah is called a “Chumash” — it’s left to the viewer to make the connection to the Chumash people who first lived in the area, from whom Rudy is descended and in whom Harrison is interested. Indeed, the fact that there’s a synagogue in this story at all may be down to that coincidence.
“Sherlock and Daughter,” a paternal twist on the Holmes legend and a new adaptation of Agatha Christie’s “Towards Zero” debut on the CW and BritBox, respectively.
And in an episode dedicated to Astoria — a nice change of view — a stereotypical housewife from a TV coffee commercial materializes in her living room. (“Don’t you want to be defined by more than just making coffee to make your husband happy? … I’m only alive for 30 seconds every 32 hours; I don’t have time to do anything else.”)
One does worry for Hampton, whether he’ll get out of his own way, or out of the way of the people trying to put him out of the way, even though he’s not the series’ most attractive character. Or perhaps better said, he has the disadvantage of his travails, mishaps and bad decisions occupying the foreground.
“Stop trying to control everything, Hampton,” says Mani’s briefly seen, unexplained yet very interesting character. “And once you accept that everything that happens is meant to happen, then you’ll be free.” It doesn’t mean people aren’t still out to kill you, or put you back in jail.
Valley historians will enjoy a cameo appearance by the Newport Pop Festival, the biggest thing to happen in that neck of the woods in 1969.
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