At first, Étoile looks as if it’s shaping up to be Fame in pointe shoes. One character even knowingly quotes the “This is where you start paying, in sweat” speech. This would be fine – great, even, because who didn’t love the quintessential 80s series about the high-energy kids from New York City’s High School of the Performing Legwarmers? The problem is that, as the new venture from Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs Maisel creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino progresses, it doesn’t seem to be sure what it is. Apart from Whimsical with a capital W, an attitude that rarely works out well for anyone.
The setup is simple. Two dance companies – Le Ballet National in Paris and the Metropolitan Ballet Theater in New York City – are struggling after Covid and assorted other modern pressures such as anti-elitist attitudes and everybody’s terrible attention spans. So what if they swapped their top dancers and choreographers and launched a huge publicity campaign about it so everyone abandoned YouTube and became interested in ballet instead?
The head of the French company, Geneviève (Charlotte Gainsbourg, jarringly unconvincing in her first television role) has already secured funding for the project. All she needs is for her former lover and head of the New York company, Jack (Luke Kirby), to agree, even though the money is coming from a man he despises – arms and chemicals manufacturer Crispin Shamblee (Simon Callow, giving his Four Weddings and a Funeral turn an evil billionaire twist. He’s not quite twirling a moustache but it’s cringe-inducing nonetheless). But what are peacenik principles when you are a ballet company director who has just had to order ordinary champagne flutes (instead of the preferred etched) for the bar for cost reasons? Jack reluctantly agrees to the swap and they hammer out a deal. “It must happen! For ballet’s sake!”
The big draw is star ballerina Cheyenne Toussaint (Lou de Laâge). She is feisty, of course, and an ecowarrior in her spare time. So furieuse about the swap is she that she turns up at Geneviève’s office straight from a protest on a fishing boat to tell her so, even though she is in a trawler’s jacket and stinks of le poisson! But there is ballet’s sake to be considered, so off she must go. In her stead comes Mishi Duplessis (Taïs Vinolo), returning to her native France and the keep of her neglectful parents, one of whom is the minister for culture and delighted to have her back as a ballerina if not as a daughter.
Added to the mix is hapless neurotic and choreographer Tobias Bell (Gideon Glick, who provides much of the comedy that works on screen). He is sent from New York to Paris and is paralysed by the lack of Crest toothpaste there, and an unnamed cleaner’s unnamed child who practises alone at the Metropolitan at night using videos of classes her mother secretly records during the day. Cheyenne discovers her and a bond is formed, revealing the golden heart under the feisty exterior.
Étoile is … fine. It passes the time. But every person seems to be acting in a slightly different show from everyone else, and tonally it falls between any and every possible stool. There is a scattering of jokes per episode but it is not funny enough to be a comedy, not dramatic enough to be a drama (nor, on the basis of a seriously terrible speech Crispin gives to Cheyenne about the need for artists to prevent their humanity “floating out into the ether”, should it go further down this road), or frothy enough to be a soap.
Occasionally (see the etched champagne flutes), it seems to be aiming for satire but – perhaps because Sherman-Palladino is a former ballet dancer herself and loves the form – the barbs are blunt. We are clearly meant to root for various characters – especially Cheyenne – but they remain ciphers it is impossible to invest in. De Laâge does a wonderful line in apoplectic fury, but when this is all you do – and when lesser dancers literally cower from you as you march through a studio – it becomes a bit much.
And then there are all the bits of bolt-on whimsy, like the bull that is to be used in a production but must not face the principal dancer because of her red costume, which the designer refuses to change. These things strip the show of the easy charm it needs if it is to ape the Palladinos’ previous hits. Étoile may be a show about dancers, but it urgently needs to find its feet.
