New Zealand’s Creamerie was already weird after one season; impressively, the second gets even weirder. Set in a post-plague future in which men have died out, it involves the struggles of three young women—Jaime (J.J. Fong), Alex (Ally Xue), and Pip (Perlina Lau)—to elude the officious organization “Wellness,” a fascist matriarchy which swarmed into the power void right after the pandemic. The trio gets in trouble when a rare male survivor named Bobby (Jay Ryan) stumbles into their midst, thrusting them into conflict with Wellness’s narcissistic leader Lane (Tandi Wright).
Creamerie’s seasons are only six episodes long, quirky and offbeat, and they manage to wring reasonable mileage out of their modest budget. Indeed, the first season’s pastoral dystopia felt a little like Y: The Last Man by way of Letterkenny, a frantic, comic adventure all the funnier for its humble canvas. The scope does broaden in season two, as the heroes leave their home turf to give us a glimpse of the wider world. This, combined with ramping histrionics and darker plot turns, leads to a more jarring tone as the ecletic comedy foundation ramps into strident melodrama. The vibe is all over the map, but the show still works in its odd, loopy way, thanks to the plucky appeal of Fong, Lau, and Xue and restless scripts that defy expectations. A whimsical, idiosyncratic treat.
