http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/arts/television/amazons-mozart-in-the-jungle-with-backstage-drama.html 2014-12-23 00:43:36 Amazon’s ‘Mozart in the Jungle,’ With Backstage Drama “Mozart in the Jungle,” Amazon’s newest streaming series, is a backstage story about a sexy New York conductor and the classical musicians around him. === For Amazon, “Transparent” was a little like the 1968 New York Jets of the upstart American Football League, the surprise winners of Super Bowl III. After Netflix scored the first two big victories in the original-digital game with “House of Cards” and “Orange Is the New Black,” Amazon (in this metaphor, the A.F.L.) turned the tables with “Transparent,” one of the best- Which makes “Transparent” and “Mozart in the Jungle” both stand out, in the first place, for what they’re not; neither is about crime, politics or the supernatural. Of course, they’re both comedies, technically, but they’re more serious in tone and more naturalistic in style than a great majority of television dramas. Jill Soloway’s “Transparent,” about three bruised Los Angeles siblings and their father, who’s working on becoming a woman, may be the closest a serial drama has come to replicating the texture of an indie movie. The new show, based on Blair Tindall’s And in some scenes — especially those involving Gael García Bernal as the sexy, impulsive new conductor of a major New York orchestra, presumably modeled on Gustavo Dudamel of the Los Angeles Philharmonic — there’s a trace of the whimsical influence of Wes Anderson. “Mozart,” whose pilot was posted in February, was created and written by an unusual team: a noted theater director, Alex Timbers, with no previous writing experience; an actor, You wonder whether writing as a relatively inexperienced troika may have had something to do with the show’s structural quirks. We’re introduced to a set of major characters, including a veteran cellist (Saffron Burrows) in a dead-end affair with the orchestra’s outgoing music director ( But the individual scenes are almost invariably rewarding, with sharp comic writing and mostly excellent work from the ensemble, particularly a vital and fully engaged Mr. García Bernal and Debra Monk, who has great moments as a caustic veteran who’s determined that Ms. Kirke’s character pay her dues. Quick on its feet and rarely dull (though Ms. Burrows’s story line could use a little more oomph), “Mozart in the Jungle” signals that someone at Amazon has good and interesting taste.