‘One Mississippi’: Tig Notaro Makes Comedy and Drama From Her Own Life
Each episode of One Mississippi begins with a jaunty cover of Hank Williams’s “Jambalaya” — the version here, zippy and jolly, is intended as an ironic contrast to the content of this show starring Tig Notaro and based on her life, her standup comedy, the documentary Tig, and her memoir. Indeed, some of the autobiographical details of Notaro’s life (and now her work) are more like Hank Williams songs as sung by Hank himself — doom-struck compositions such as “I Can’t Help It If I’m Still in Love With You” and “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”
It is Notaro’s gift to be able to turn momentous events in her life — her breast cancer, her mastectomy, the death of her mother — into comedy that is both wry and warm yet doesn’t sentimentalize very much. The achievement of One Mississippi, its six-episode first season streaming on Amazon Prime starting on Friday, is that it’s awfully good at showcasing Notaro’s standup point-of-view without softening her hardheaded attitude toward life.
The premise of One Mississippi is that a semifictional Tig — a public-radio storyteller — leaves her Los Angeles home to attend her mother’s funeral and gets drawn back into her old life with her genial brother, Remy (Noah Harpster), and her emotionally frozen stepfather, Bill (the marvelous character actor John Rothman). Tig, who navigates the world through deadpan jokes, doesn’t fit into the rhythm of the folksy, down-home Southern life she long ago left behind. The comedy arises from the tension between Tig and her new setting, with occasional pop-ins from her L.A. girlfriend, played by Casey Wilson.
As an actor, Notaro has a narrow bandwidth, but that’s OK: That deadpan delivery based on a standup-comic persona served Bob Newhart awfully well, didn’t it? She doesn’t need to express a wide array of emotions through her face and gestures when it’s all there in her words, and in other performers’ reactions to her. Working with Diablo Cody as a co-writer and director Nicole Holofcener (Enough Said) — plus the ubiquitous Louis C.K. lurking around the edges as an executive producer — Notaro keeps the show moving along with a lot of low-key funny observations while always allowing for moments of seriousness and even sadness to enter into the mix. (The poignance of the project is increased by the exuberant performance of Rya Kihlstedt as Tig’s dead mother, seen in flashbacks and Tig’s dreams.) There are times when Tig seems so lonesome she could cry, but she always pulls herself together to give those around her — including us — a smile.
One Mississippi is streaming on Amazon Prime.
