Celebrities
Jason Bateman’s best TV shows: Why DTF St Louis and Black Rabbit are some of the actor’s finest work
Jason Bateman has been acting for 45 years – he landed his first role, on the TV series Little House on the Prairie, when he was just 10 – but lately something has changed. Now, he’s everywhere. And he’s never been better.
If you’ve seen the HBO series DTF St Louis, you’ll know what I’m talking about. An immaculately crafted three-hander, it stars Bateman as a TV weatherman who seems to be the personification of big-fish-small-pond success, David Harbour (Stranger Things) as the guy who translates his patter into sign-language for hearing-impaired viewers, and Linda Cardellini (Freaks and Geeks) as the latter’s wife, who becomes the former’s lover.
DTF is a tangled web spun around a surprising death, and the show continually throws curve balls. But at its heart is the implacable refusal of Bateman’s Clark Forrest to dish the dirt on either Floyd (Harbour) or Carol (Cardellini) to save his own skin. He’s unflinching in the face of police interrogation, his motives a mystery to the very end.
In performance terms, it’s a masterclass of restraint, and the polar opposite to Harbour’s loose-limbed and flesh-wobbling exuberance, which is in its own way equally mesmerising. To a degree, it’s a variation on the straight-man role Bateman has occupied for much of his adult career, certainly since Arrested Development at any rate.
In that hilariously twisted sitcom, which originally ran for three seasons from 2003 to 2006 before Netflix revived it for two more seasons, in 2013 and 2018, Bateman was Michael Bluth, the middle son of a corrupt property developer (Jeffrey Tambor) and his alcoholic wife (Jessica Walter). His siblings (Will Arnett as Gob, an inept magician; Portia de Rossi as Lindsay, a vain do-gooding socialite; and Tony Hale as Buster, the aimless and overly indulged baby) were selfish, amoral, spoilt idiots. Michael was the moral centre of the clan, determined to right the family’s fortunes, and its behaviour, though occasionally undone by his own failings, minor though they were in comparison.
His performance was all about looking dazed rather than trying to dazzle; his face was continually clouded by disbelief and disappointment as his family members let him, and themselves, down again and again.
But while he’s become an adept straight man, with a litany of similar roles over the past 20-odd years, Bateman has increasingly been leaning into the dark side too.
For me, his turn as Vince in last year’s Netflix series Black Rabbit represents some of his best work ever. A taut thriller about two brothers who have swapped indie rock for hospitality – worlds that, in this telling, are actually not so far apart – the show is what The Bear might feel like if the Safdie brothers (Uncut Gems, Good Time) had made it.
Jude Law plays Jake Friedkin, a smooth operator who runs front-of-house and is a partner in the Black Rabbit, a hip restaurant-bar-nightspot in downtown Manhattan. When his brother Vince (Bateman) calls up from somewhere out west begging him to stump up for a flight home because he’s up to his neck in trouble, Jake’s first impulse is to say no. His second is to buy him a ticket. And that’s where things begin to unravel.
As soon as he’s back in town, Vince – bearded, consistently dressed in jeans and band T-shirts, never more than a drink away from the gutter or the slammer – insinuates himself into the life of the venue he helped found. And that means the gangsters to whom he owes money know exactly where to find him.
Vince isn’t a bad guy, exactly – unlike the terrorist blackmailer Bateman plays in the tense but implausible 2024 thriller Carry-On – but he’s a guy who makes bad decisions, with little heed of the consequences, until there are no more decisions left. He’s a charming screw-up, and Bateman brings him brilliantly and empathetically to life.
Those who pay attention to the credits will note that Bateman was also the set-up director on Black Rabbit, in charge of the first two episodes and thus bearing a lot of the weight of establishing the show’s distinctive look and feel. (Laura Linney, who co-starred with Bateman in Ozark, directs another two; and Australia’s Justin Kurzel, of Snowtown and Macbeth fame, closes out the eight-episode series with the final pair).
This is not an instance of the producers taking a risk on an actor with behind-the-camera ambitions, though. Bateman’s first helming stint came on the series Valerie (later titled The Hogan Family), in which he also starred, when he was just 18. That made him the Directors Guild of America’s youngest ever director at that time (a record that seemingly still stands).
He has directed intermittently over the years since. He even spent time in his 20s, when he thought his acting career was over, shadowing legendary TV comedy director James Burrows (Taxi, Cheers, Friends) to learn how it was done. But he stepped up to the plate in a major way with the Netflix crime drama Ozark, directing the first two and final two episodes of its first season, and another five episodes across its four-season run. He even won an Emmy for his efforts.
Of course, if you have young kids (or are a fan of animation), you’ll also know Bateman is also the voice of Nick Wilde, the fox con-turned-detective in Zootopia and its sequel, which was the second-highest-grossing film at the box office last year with a haul of $US1.86 billion ($2.6 billion) worldwide (making it the second-most successful animated movie ever, behind only Ne Zha 2).
And if you listen to podcasts, you might know that he’s one-third of the talent behind (and in front of) Smartless, alongside his old Arrested Development buddy Will Arnett and Sean Hayes (Will & Grace). The weekly entertainment chat-and-celebrity interview show has spawned a studio and multiple podcasts, and has proven quite the handy little earner to boot: in 2021, they signed a three-year deal with Amazon reportedly worth “as much as $US80 million”, and in 2024, they signed a new deal with Sirius reportedly worth $US100 million.
It’s a remarkable slate for an actor who spent his 20s drinking and doing drugs, convinced his time had come and gone.
Jason Bateman has always been a likeable presence on screen, and by and large that’s served him well. But lately, he’s dared to go dark, and even to be outright unlikeable at times. Whether by coincidence or consequence, Mr Everyman is now Mr Everywhere.