Steven Soderbergh has called it quits in the realm of directing movies, but since his last feature played in theaters (Side Effects in 2013) he's been busy as hell directing plays and TV shows and even re-cutting classic movies basically just for fun. Obviously there's the The Knick, which is fabulous and about ready to return for its second season. He's also working up The Girlfriend Experience as another series for Starz, and now we've got Red Oaks, an Amazon series about growing up in the New Jersey suburbs in the 1980s. The lead boy is played by Craig Roberts, a young Brit with an interesting and already long filmography behind him, including a breakout turn in the Richard Ayoade-directed indie Submarine from 2010 and, more recently, bit parts in comedies like 22 Jump Street and Neighbors (you may remember him as Assjuice).
Craig is joined here by Richard Kind and Paul Reiser, which is a Mad About You reunion we can really get behind, as well as Jennifer Grey and Josh Meyers (brother of Seth). (There's also a really pretty girl who is impossibly named Gage Golightly for a bit of fun trivia about the cast.) The pilot is available for streaming now on Amazon, and it looks like it effectively conjures that "wish-this-was-my-carefree-life" vibe that movies set in the mid-'80s are so effective delivering. You know what it is. That John Hughes state of mind. If you weren't a teenager during that time you get a weird kind of nostalgia for memories that aren't even yours, and if you were a teen at the time it was probably awesome and you have the best memories (full disclosure: I'm projecting). In any event, here's hoping Soderbergh's continued forays into serialized programming come even close to being as good as The Knick, because even something half that awesome is going to be great.
Pause at: 0:12. The '80s are here. Scene-setting alert at 0:36. Josh Meyers being amazingly gross at 0:42. Speaking of The Knick, look at what happens at 0:43!
Song: John Cafferty, "Voice of America's Sons"
Essential Quote: "A C is a Jewish F!"—Sam (Kind)
