Living With Yourself review, Culture Whisper
All good drama involves characters fighting with themselves; with their faults, their desires, their hypocrisies. Usually, this is subconscious: multiple selves contained in one confused vessel. But in Living With Yourself, the new doppelgänger comedy-drama on Netflix, this inner conflict is literalised as two opposing versions of Paul Rudd are birthed into existence.
The strangeness of this series emerges immediately, in the first shot. The apathetic Miles (Rudd) climbs out a layer of soil in the middle of a forest, splitting the bag of plastic he was buried in. He surfaces, wearing nothing but a nappy. Writer/creator Timothy Greenberg then hops back 24 hours as Miles, in his office, kills a fly. ‘You’re welcome,’ he says.
These time-hops become something of a staple in the series, bearing some resemblance to the odd Natasha Lyonne series Russian Doll. Time and perspective don’t unfold in straight lines; they’re more like traceable squiggles.
