Maybe one of the reasons the last few years seem to have lasted forever is because we keep being told the same story. Way back in March 2020, Tiger King debuted on Netflix and kept 35 million of us gripped – an eccentric true crime epic full of big cats, bad hair and awful decisions that felt like the perfect lockdown 1.0 binge.
Then came the sequel series. Then another. Then the podcasts and TV specials. A rumoured Rob Lowe movie and a cancelled Nicolas Cage show. Now, then, we get the next chapter of the story, which is actually the same chapter you’ve already read – Joe and Carole’s feud retold yet again in the form of a comedy drama series. Overplaying the jokes and underselling the nuance, Joe Vs. Carole is exactly what you expect it’s going to be – a flashy, occasionally funny, but wholly unnecessary exercise in flogging a dead tiger.
Officially based on the second season of the true crime podcast, Over My Dead Body, it’s hard to shake the feeling that everything Joe Vs Carole does is in the shadow of Tiger King. Netflix’s original documentary was far too long – a show that felt slightly too smugly superior to the poor, deluded, mulleted subjects of its human zoo – but it was still a fascinating watch all the same thanks to the star power of its oddball characters.
Joe (played here by John Cameron Mitchell, from Girls) is a violent gay redneck Willy Wonka with a petting zoo full of dangerous and neglected animals, and Carole (Kate McKinnon, from SNL and Ghostbusters) is sort of the opposite and the same. Her own odd obsessions and potential criminality get called into question as their stories intersect, and Joe Vs Carole skips between time periods to try and package their bafflingly odd relationship into something that sort of makes sense – starting right when Joe hires a hitman to kill Carole.
Where the comedy of the documentary was mostly unintentional – a pantomime of absurdity by people who were possibly too stupid to know why they were becoming memes – the new show works much harder for its laughs. McKinnon and Mitchell look like they’ve watched every single series and spin-off possible to pull off their cartoon characters so perfectly, but they’re still both in the kind of show that feels like it’s made for your annoying friend who dresses up as Joe Exotic for Halloween.
Some of the comedy works (it somehow feels easier to laugh when all the animals are CG), but it’s far too broad to sell the drama whenever the show decides to get real. It’s slickly made, and if you haven’t already seen Tiger King it might all stand up as a semi-solid sitcom, but if you genuinely haven’t already heard the story before this definitely isn’t the place to start.
“While this program is based on real events, certain parts have been fictionalised and are not intended to reflect on any actual person…” reads the opening scrawl of every episode, just begging for another lawsuit. Why is hard to believe this isn’t the last we hear from Joe and Carole?
‘Joe Vs. Carole’ is available exclusively on Sky and NOW
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