Apple TV+’s Strange Dramedy Government Cheese Isn’t a Full Meal But Still Offers Something To Chew On

While the streaming boom has brought us plenty of off-kilter television, best embodied by Lynch’s 17-part tour de force Twin Peaks: The Return, the TV landscape can still always use more of the weird. Sure, we’ve received plenty of strangeness from a few highly talked about prestige shows like Severance or Atlanta, as well as from auteur-driven oddities like Fantasmas or I’m a Virgo, but given how many familiar formats we see on the small screen (i.e., there are four CSI spin-offs and counting), there’s certainly still room for daring programming.

Enter Government Cheese, an Apple TV+ original offering marketed as a show that “gets surreal.” Partially living up to its word, this family dramedy certainly has plenty of unusual touches: commercials that come alive, biblical allegories in the flesh, and an Andersonian camera that loves capturing things at perpendicular angles. But while these peculiar elements are undeniably present, they mostly exist in occasional bursts of magical realism as odd happenings drift in and out of the background.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with only giving us a dash of the uncanny, but when combined with an exceedingly slow start that provides little to grab onto between all its whimsy, the first half of Government Cheese is a bit stale. Thankfully, it eventually turns things around somewhat, combining its consistently impressive visual execution with growth from its central family as it gains some much-needed cohesion. And while the series may not fully live up to its big American Dreams, at least it doesn’t deliver another cookie-cutter suburb.

Set in the late ‘60s in San Fernando Valley, we follow Hampton Chambers (David Oyelowo), a recently released con man booked for check forgery. While inside, he found the Lord and, perhaps more tangibly, invented a self-sharpening drill he believes could make him a famed inventor. However, his release doesn’t quite go as planned. For starters, after being locked up for three years for a carelessly committed crime, most of his family wants nothing to do with him. His wife, Astoria (Simone Missick), is outright disappointed she has to deal with his schemes and empty promises again. His son Winston (Jahi Winston) was closer to Hampton’s cellmate than his Pops, which leaves only his other son, Einstein (Evan Alexander Ellison), thrilled about this homecoming. However, it gets a lot worse. After getting out, Hampton realizes he owes a gang of murderous French-Canadians, the Prevost brothers, two thousand dollars that he very much can’t pay. Given just two weeks to come up with the cash, Hampton needs to find a way to make money with his drill, or he’s dead meat.

However, despite this ticking clock, one of the biggest initial problems with Government Cheese is that it takes way too long to get going. It’s just one of countless modern series that doesn’t make the most of every sequence, and while most of its episodes are only around 30-ish minutes, large chunks still feel perfunctory, doing little to develop its characters or give much to dwell on. It would be one thing if it leaned harder into surrealism, but given that these touches are more garnishes than the main course, we’re left with slim pickings.

Specifically, it takes a long time for Hampton to prove a worthwhile protagonist: while David Oyelowo is nothing but charm as he gets across this huckster’s chronic overconfidence, for the first few episodes, Hampton isn’t likable enough to root for or rancid enough to be an outright anti-hero. It’s a little unclear what showrunners Paul Hunter and Aeysha Carr are going for here, as best embodied by Hampton doing something unforgivable in the first episode that quickly falls into the background—does Hampton feel guilty for what he’s done, or is he completely unbothered? The extended cast also doesn’t pull us in right away, each embodied by airy, cartoonish details that make it hard to take them seriously.