Friday 9 September 2022

Mo - Season One (2022 Solvan 'Slick' Naim, Creators Mohammed Amer / Ramy Youssef)

Eight part dramedy from Netflix. Texas. Multi-lingual title character played by Mo Amer (who often sounds like Seth Rogan) is Palestinian, also speaks great English and great Mexican (his GF is). Unable to get citizenship he resorts to selling knock-off gear from his boot. He's accidentally shot and this leads to him becoming addicted to 'lean'. (Lean is cough syrup containing codeine, soda and candy.)

Great episode (the third) when he learns his father was tortured and no one's told him and instead of counselling, his girlfriend takes him to confession at her local Catholic church - thus you get this interesting Muslim-Catholic Palestine-US-Mexico thing going on ('Jesus was Palestinian. Why do you have to show him nailed on the cross like that?') Which makes it truly original.

There's lots of stuff about olive oil and I'd predicted that by the end they've started to produce mother's recipe. Well, as it turns out, that was the plan, but the series ends with Mo accidentally in Mexico and being pursued on a motorbike by members of a cartel... Cue series two.

Mohammed Amer is a stand-up comic and the series is partly autobiographical - his family did flee from Kuwait when the Iraqis invaded, and his father did die when he was 14.

With Teresa Ruiz, Tobe Nwigwe, Omar Elba, Farah Bsieso, Michael Kim, Lee Eddy.

Ramy is himself a writer-actor with his own self-titled series (2019) in which Mo co-starred.


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