Bupkis review – Pete Davidson plays Pete Davidson in messy series

A goodly slice of the public has come to view Pete Davidson as one of those famous-for-being-famous types, better known for his tabloid-topping exploits than his career in comedy. A former class clown with a bank account in the millions, he comports himself like he’s shooting spitballs at the man-about-town concept: he’s dropping six figures with pal Colin Jost on a decommissioned Staten Island ferry that may be structurally unsound; he’s reinventing fashion by dressing like a club promoter/gas station parking lot weed dealer; he’s canoodling with a lineup of increasingly glamorous A-listers; he’s getting high on who knows what.

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Davidson’s probably identified more with the fact of being on Saturday Night Live than the work he’s done there, having gone eight seasons without much in the way of classic characters or catchphrases. When he started out at the sketch institution, he presented as a natural descendant of Adam Sandler, another lanky goofball with boyish charms that took him from detention to sold-out stages. The blockbuster vehicles that shored up his predecessor’s reputation as a movie star, however, never came.

He has since speed-run the arc of the Sandman’s career so rapidly that at age 29, he’s already hit the autobiographical self-loathing phase that Funny People ushered in as a midlife crisis. On his new Peacock series Bupkis, co-creator Davidson stars as “Pete Davidson”, announced by Stacy Keach in a disclaimer at the top of each episode as a fictional creation not intended to reflect any real entity. Lasering his notebook-doodle tattoos off one by one, Pete wants to shed his image as the overexposed “scum bro” he sees when he Googles himself, a goal conceivably shared by his real-life inspiration as he exposes the man behind the man. We’ll watch him bristle under the pressurized artificiality of fame and struggle to stay sober, but everything we really need to know can be gleaned from the very first scene, in which a masturbating Pete inadvertently ejaculates on to his mother (Edie Falco) in the Staten Island home they share. Awkward, confessional, unsettlingly intimate and only moderately funny, this opening salvo condenses the whole show into one spring-loaded symbol.

From his infinitely patient mom to his tentative love interest (Chase Sui Wonders) to his cantankerous and cancerous grandfather Poppy (Joe Pesci), everyone in Pete’s life urges him to get his act together and grow up. To this end, he tries caring for a child through a single afternoon, getting to one of his gigs on time, doing a serious role in a drama, rehab, all of his misadventures filled out with a host of high-profile cameo talent. Pesci’s hard-bitten wisdom in particular recalls the assorted sages passing through Louie, this series’ closest antecedent in the lineage of comedian roman à clef projects. (Louis CK wanted Pesci for Horace and Pete, to no avail, Peacock’s deal evidently sweet enough to lure him back to the small screen for his first regular TV role in nearly 40 years.) Though every piece seems to come from somewhere else, a derivative streak that undercuts the touches of personal specificity. Pete’s existential ambling suggests a dumber Louie, his travails in the surreal demimonde of celebrity suggest a dumber Atlanta, and his dealings with his coterie of hangers-on suggest a slightly less-dumb Entourage.

Some have cited Curb Your Enthusiasm as a reference point, applicable only insofar as Pete occasionally has run-ins with fellow comedians, the most memorable among them John Mulaney. Their wry and sincere chat about addiction and mortality at a diner, shot to resemble the Al Pacino-Robert De Niro sitdown in Heat, hits the notes of profundity, mordant humor and insidery candor that the show spends the rest of its eight episodes reaching for. Otherwise, the comedy is wildly inconsistent in its approaches and their success. The demented surrealism of a group therapy session with Jadakiss and the Terrifier franchise’s murderous mime Art the Clown plays, but a sojourn in Florida with Simon Rex as a branding-conscious sketchball named Crispy drags on and on.

A couple of episodes end with a photo from Davidson’s family albums clarifying that a given plotline comes right from his past, a directness that adds edges at their spikiest when left to our surmise. Familiar character types feel fresh again in their realistic flourishes; as Pete’s sister Casey (Oona Roche) talks about her frustration at being thought of in terms of her last name, she can cite a date when a man expressed condolences for Pete losing the father both kids had to mourn after his death on 9/11. This vulnerability emerges as the main factor distinguishing Davidson’s self-portraiture from its many conceptual kindreds, a pile on to which we may also fairly throw Dave, Master of None, even Bojack Horseman. None of them have Pete Davidson, a work in progress confident enough to share his demons while he’s in the middle of dueling them. His upward climb out of dirtbaggism works the same way as any setup and punchline – it’s funny because it’s true.

• Bupkis is available on Peacock on 4 May with a UK date to be announced