Two Paul Rudds are better than one.
Binge-worthy tv-series is the foundations upon which Netflix is built upon, the perfect shows for you to simply put on and waste your day away. With drama series, you can find yourself lost a little halfway through as your attention might wane. With comedy binge-watching, it’s a different matter, with short twenty to thirty-minute episodes a comedy series can just fly past in no time. Living With Yourself is easily your next series to binge.
Living With Yourself is about Miles Elliott (Paul Rudd) a man who is down on his luck and is becoming more and more depressed by the day. Miles begins to fail at work, with his wife and with everything going on in his life. In desperate need for a solution, Mile’s co-worker informs him of a spa that will rejuvenate him. $50,000 later and Miles wakes up in a grave and finds another Miles in his house with his wife Kate (Aisling Bea).
Living With Yourself stands strong because of the great acting of Paul Rudd. I recently listened to an interview of Rudd explaining how he acted as two versions of his character and it isn’t an easy task to pull off. Depressed Miles and happy Miles are so vastly different, yet the same, that you can easily tell the two apart. They’re looks and their demeanours are so well created that you don’t really know which Miles you want to keep as the actual Miles.
Miles’s story is filled with decisions and questions about how one can change themselves for the better. Living With Yourself is not just a comedy but is, in fact, a series about how the events you go through in your life create who you are and it is an aspect of the series that really grabs your attention. You feel for both versions of Miles as they try to desperately grab a hold of their lives with the original Miles being the least able to better himself.
Comedy wise the show is set up in such a way that at any moment there could be a laugh out loud moment. Paul Rudd has really become his own over the years and it shows in this series, his comedic acting as Ant-Man is present in this series as you see him acting both confused and smart on-screen at the same time.
The pacing of Living With Yourself is where some viewers might lose their attention. The show is set up to show you both Miles’ days as all the events occur. This leads to a lot of moving back and forth on the series’ timeline. Each back and forth is, however, planned out to precision with some moments in the last episode being surprising and stronger than earlier on in the season. The whole series is accompanied by a strange score which at first doesn’t seem to fit in with the series. As the series moves along the score begins to fit in more and more but it can still be jolting at times.
Living With Yourself is a short and sweet comedy-drama with a lot to say about our lives and how we live them. I went into the series just expecting a comedy with a few funny Paul Rudd moments that I would later find as gifs. I finished the series with a smile on my face and four hours well spent. Living With Yourself saving grace is its strong ideas on how we live our lives. These ideas, along with a great ending, help the series to be a great comedy-drama thats worthy of your binge-watching time.