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Frankenstein鈥檚 Monster鈥檚 Monster, Frankenstein

Directed by Daniel Gray Longino

Netflix

OVER the past three seasons of Netflix鈥檚 1980s homage Stranger Things, my favourite character has consistently been Jim Hopper, the grumbly police chief with a good heart played by David Harbour. When I finished watching this summer鈥檚 instalment of that show, I was looking for more of Harbour. Boy, did I find it.

In a bizarre 30-minute Netflix special called Frankenstein鈥檚 Monster鈥檚 Monster, Frankenstein, he stars as fictionalised versions of himself (David Harbour III), his own father (David Harbour Jr) and his father鈥檚 father (David Harbour Sr). The recursive title drew me in, and once I started watching, I couldn鈥檛 tear my eyes away. I just kept thinking: 鈥淲hat, exactly, am I watching?鈥�

It is a mockumentary in which David Harbour III is exploring his father鈥檚 work as an actor and playwright. The show is cut throughout with present-day scenes in which this version of Harbour is interviewing friends of his dead father in an effort to learn more about the man and his approach to acting.

That approach, it very quickly turns out, was to be terrible. The bulk of the programme is made up of flashbacks to the televised play Harbour Jr (remember, that鈥檚 the father) wrote and starred in about Dr Frankenstein and his much-maligned monster.

Every choice in the following 30 minutes feels poorly made on purpose. The lighting is awful, the sets are cheaply made and the acting sets a new bar for melodrama. Nothing is subtle. Three minutes in, there is a direct reference within the play to the trope of Chekhov鈥檚 gun. (The playwright鈥檚 stricture was that if a character brings one on stage in act one, it had jolly well better go off before the curtain call.)

鈥淚t is quite deliberately confusing: who is man and who is monster? Do we all contain a bit of both?鈥�

Everything that makes this show almost painful to watch kept me hooked. We see shoddy home-movie-esque footage of Harbour Jr giving clinics on poorly lit stages where, referring to a leading New York drama school, he proclaims, 鈥淭hat鈥檚 how I got into Juilliard!鈥� Then there are uncomfortable moments from a painful interview he gave on a mid-80s talk show.

Then there is Harbour Jr as Frankenstein and Frankenstein鈥檚 monster (the show makes a big play of the common confusion between the two). Dr Frankenstein, in this telling of his story, is pretending to be his monster, while his assistant pretends to be the doctor. It is all quite deliberately confusing: who is man and who is monster? Do we all contain a bit of both?

If you are looking for hints of Mary Shelley鈥檚 masterpiece in this absurd show, this is the only sliver of it. The whole production is poking fun at itself through nested lenses, and then winking at the audience and itself in a meta-commentary on the act of acting and maybe even the idea of creating something original.

I especially loved the inclusion of the fictional television adverts for a store called Chekhov Guns & Ammo and a steakhouse called London, USA. In the latter, Harbour, as his fictional father, parodies Welles advertisement out-takes where he gets increasingly belligerent and demanding. I couldn鈥檛 help but wonder whether Harbour is poking a bit of fun at himself.

This may be Netflix nakedly cashing in on its rising star. It may be a vanity project for Harbour. Or maybe it is him admitting that he, like all of us, is a bit of a mad scientist. But it isn鈥檛 a bad way to spend half an hour.