Watching the new Amazon Prime series Mammals, I was reminded of an unsettling – and maybe even apocryphal – Margaret Atwood anecdote. When the author of The Handmaid’s Tale asked a male friend why men fear women, she was told that men are afraid that women will laugh at them. When she asked women what they feared in men, they told her they were afraid of being killed.
In Jez Butterworth’s surreal and funny miniseries on love and infidelity, James Corden – in an unfortunate callback to his recent tabloid troubles with a New York City brasserie – plays Jamie, an ambitious London chef about to open his dream restaurant. He and his wife, Amandine (Melia Kreiling), are on a babymoon to Cornwall when a series of notable events occur almost at once: the cottage next door is revealed to be occupied by Tom Jones (the real one), a majestic whale breaches the blue-black sea, and Amandine suffers a late-term miscarriage.
