by What might a moderately aged individual do after learning she has a year, possibly year and a half to live? The freeing, philosophical and, indeed, comic parts of such a determination blend in “The Big C,” a Showtime series adding Laura Linney to the compensation channel’s exhibition of idiosyncratic driving women in shot half-hours that are more emotional than entertaining. Linney contributes her person with the imperative indignation and disarray, yet she’s the solitary life saver of humankind in the midst of a skilled cast generally burdened with satirized jobs. Fascinating in its vanity and watchable for what Linney brings to it, the show takes a stab at caprice.
We join the story particularly in progress: Linney’s Cathy Jamison — a wedded secondary teacher in Minnesota — has effectively been educated she has Stage IV melanoma and has decided to do without forceful treatment that, best case scenario, would get her main somewhat more time. All things considered, she embarks to take advantage of what life she has left.
As a feature of that choice, Cathy at first selects not to unveil her condition to anybody — including her significant other (Oliver Platt), who she has thrown from the house; and child (Gabriel Basso), both naturally confounded by her conduct. This prompts marginally off-kilter trades with her PCP (Reid Scott), the one individual to whom she can trust.
As it were, Cathy’s assurance to achieve — indeed, definitively what precisely isn’t clear — in the time accessible starts to feel marginally egotistical, in light of the fact that her choice to protect friends and family is unavoidably transitory.
The supporting cast incorporates John Benjamin Hickey as her sibling Sean — a traffic intersection instigator who jumps on a dangerous atmospheric devation and demands eating trash to fight all the food Americans squander — and “Valuable” star Gabourey Sidibe as an overweight understudy not set in stone to help.
If by some stroke of good luck — as made by Darlene Hunt, with Jenny Bicks working as showrunner — these fringe players weren’t such one-dimensional builds. Sidibe is especially badly served by stressed, sitcom-y discourse, at one point blaming Cathy for “‘Blind Side’ dreams, where the edgy white bitch attempts to save the dark child.”
Platt, Hickey and Phyllis Somerville (as Cathy’s crotchety neighbor with a lovable basset dog, the ideal variety to suit the show’s wandering, ambivalent tone) are sufficient to keep their characters from overturning the edge.
In any case, “The Big C” also regularly falls into what has turned into a sort of Showtime trap that may be classified “Weeds” condition, where past the eye-catching reason (pot-hawking mother, various character mother, pill-popping attendant mother, presently disease mother), there’s an excess of peculiarity for the good of its own.
To be reasonable, these series may profit from week by week seeing instead of concentrated swallows (the initial three scenes were made accessible), permitting a crowd of people to invest energy with the fascinating heroes, then, at that point, abandon the premises.
In the last investigation, “The Big C” gets an “E” for splendid exertion yet feels like a wasted chance. Allowed the opportunity to investigate the main thing throughout everyday life, the show at last gives minimal in excess of a grandstand for a tremendous entertainer, while dealing with death like the following marginally kooky boondocks.
