Russian Doll Review

Every time Nadia Vulvokov dies, and she dies constantly, she is back in front of the bathroom mirror at her 36th birthday party as Harry Nilsson's Gotta Get Up starts again. The first season, eight half-hours with Leslye Headland as showrunner, turns that reset into an engine: the rules shift, the fruit rots, people start to vanish, and the loop becomes a way to talk about addiction, a volatile mother and the jokes people use to avoid both. Charlie Barnett's anxious, orderly Alan, caught in a loop of his own, is the perfect opposite number.

Natasha Lyonne gives the performance of her career, all gravel voice, red curls and timing that makes despair sound like a punchline, and Chris Teague's Emmy-winning photography turns lower Manhattan into a warm, slightly unreal maze.

The second season, with Lyonne running the show, is looser and stranger: the 6 train drops Nadia into 1982, inside the body of her pregnant mother Nora, played by Chloë Sevigny, and she goes after the gold Krugerrands Nora lost that year. It is braver than a repeat would have been and less precise than the first run. Fifteen episodes, and almost none wasted.