Posted in: HBO, Review, streaming, Trailer, TV, YouTube | Tagged: bleeding cool, cable, comedy, comedy thriller, hbo max, hbomax, maisie williams, Review, Sian Philips, streaming, television, tv, Two Weeks to Live

Two Weeks to Live Review: Maisie Williams Series Too Weak to Work

Two Weeks to Live is Maisie Williams' first new major TV series after the end of Game of Thrones. It's a comedy-thriller about a girl duped into thinking the world is ending, so she sets out to kill her father's murderer and sets off a chain of unpleasant events. It's not very good. Williams plays Kim, a teenager raised off the grid and trained to fight and use weapons by her survivalist mother Tina (Sian Clifford). Kim runs away from home taste life in the outside world and meets Nicky (Mawaan Rizwan) and his dickhead brother Jay (Taheen Modak) at a pub. Jay thinks Kim is a flake for believing in the crazy conspiracies her mother drummed into her and ropes Nicky into a prank with a faked internet video announcing the world is going to end.

What's a girl to do? Why, knock off the biggest item on her bucket list, of course! She goes off to kill the gangster who murdered her father in front of her when she was little. And he's played by Sean Pertwee in his first TV appearance since the end of Gotham. The series peaks early in its second episode by having Maisie Williams fight Sean Pertwee to the death. That's a fanfic explosion! Arya vs. Alfred! She even does the same finishing move she used against the Night King on him!

What happens next is a predictable, anticlimactic letdown. Tina shows up to retrieve Kim, who's now pissed off that she's lied to her for the last ten years. They have to go into hiding with Nicky and Jay because a bunch of bad guys are now after them, including a bent copper (Jason Flemyng) and his psychopathic partner (Thalissa Teixeira). There's a lot of running around and weak jokes where everyone quips in an annoying and petty way meant to undercut the seriousness of crime and murder. Nobody in the show acts as a recognizable human being because the writing is on the level of a comic book written by people who have spent way too much time watching Tarantino movies but lacking his wit and flare.

The fantasy world the story is set in feels made-up where everyone runs around with guns when the UK is just not a gun-crazy culture the way the US is. The whole show just doesn't ring true, the scripts feel undercooked and underwritten. The show is kept afloat mainly by Maisie Williams's charisma and Sian Clifford's ability to play brittle comedy that she mastered in Fleabag. The show isn't going to hurt any of the actors' careers. Willaims and Philips will certainly go on to much better shows, and we can watch this one as a trifle while making dinner and forget about it soon after. Two Weeks to Live is now streaming on HBOMax.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!