Andrew Daly's speciality is the decent, cardiganed man who does not know he is in a tragedy. In Review he built a whole series on that face and then, over three seasons, took everything away from it, slowly, for laughs.
Fi1m perspective
Forrest MacNeil sits on a sofa in a cardigan, holds up a number of stars and tells the camera what life was like this week. Andrew Daly plays him with a grin that does not move, and he delivers the programme's slogan, "Life: it's literally all we have. But is it any good?", as though it were a perfectly reasonable thing for a grown man to say into a lens. The joke is that he means it. Nothing he is asked to do strikes him as something he might refuse, because the programme has asked, and the programme is his life's work.
The career behind that face is a long apprenticeship. Daly came up through New York improv and sketch after Ithaca College, with early work at the Upright Citizens Brigade and two years on MADtv (2000–02), then settled into supporting television parts. The one that mattered was Terrence Cutler in Eastbound & Down (2009–12), the high-school principal engaged to the woman Kenny Powers once went out with: a decent man played as if decency were a character flaw, with a steadiness the series enjoys chipping at. Then came Review (2014–17), which he co-adapted from an Australian original with Jeffrey Blitz and Charlie Siskel, wrote, produced and led.
What he does, and does better than almost anyone in American comedy, is hold a wholesome surface still while everything under it gives way. He has said himself that he loves "to play characters who are stuffy and nerdy who either then have a dark side or are pushed to a breaking point", and Review is that sentence stretched to three seasons. The shape of Forrest's fall we will not describe. What we can say is that we laughed at the grin for most of the first season and somewhere in the second we stopped, because the face had not changed at all and everything around it had, and the stillness that had been funny was no longer funny.
The limits are real. It is, from Cutler onwards, essentially one man, and a supporting part can only hint at what a lead gets to finish; in Eastbound & Down he is a well-made piece of furniture in someone else's house. Review is also dark enough, and odd enough in its premise, that a good many viewers will not get past the first sofa, and we understand them without agreeing.
Since Review he has gone mostly into voice work, often several small parts per animated series, and into guest roles and podcasts. That is a curious place for a man who proved he could carry a slow tragedy to nine episodes at a time, and we hope it is a rest rather than a retirement. Start Review from the beginning and see it through; the rules of the show are the point, and the stars he holds up at the end mean nothing without the ones at the start.
Biography
Andrew Daly (born 15 April 1971) is an American actor and comedian. He was born in Mount Kisco, New York, and graduated with a BFA in drama from Ithaca College. He trained in improvisation at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York and performed with the sketch duo The Two Andys.
Daly appeared in supporting roles on series including Eastbound & Down (2009–2012) as Terrence Cutler and MADtv. He starred as Forrest MacNeil, and served as co-creator, writer and executive producer, on the Comedy Central series Review (2014–2017). He has made recurring appearances on programmes such as Silicon Valley, Veep and Modern Family, and provided voices for animated series including Rick and Morty and Bob's Burgers.
