91色情片

Creator Timothy Greenberg

Netflix

ARE two Paul Rudds better than one? We find out in Living With Yourself, a Netflix comedy in which Rudd plays Miles Elliot, a burnt-out, middle-class suburbanite. His marriage is strained after years of unsuccessful attempts to have a child and the normal decay that can set in with routine. He has hit a roadblock at the advertising agency where he works, coming up empty when he needs ideas.

Then, he gets a chance to hit the refresh button. A colleague has recommended a nondescript spa where he is offered a deal that sounds too good to be true. For $50,000, he can undergo a procedure 鈥� mysteriously described as to do with DNA restructuring and microsynaptic memory transfer 鈥� and voila, he will be a better version of himself.

It is no spoiler to explain that instead of waking up feeling fantastic, Miles comes to in a shallow grave in a forest. He finds his way home to see an identical Miles living in his home, talking to his wife and living his life. It turns out the procedure he underwent was cloning and his original self wasn鈥檛 supposed to wake up at all.

You can imagine the hijinks that ensue. They may not tread any new ground, but it is a joy to see Rudd inhabit very different versions of the same person. He can manage to look a decade older or younger through a single posture or expression.

When the two Miles confront each other, it reminds me of a conversation my friends and I have had about teleportation. The person who comes out the other end of a hypothetical teleportation machine may look like you and have your memories, but even if every single atom is in the same position in your body, is it you?

鈥淎 lot is lost if we try to edit ourselves: what we like in people isn鈥檛 always about perfection, flaws can be endearing鈥�

A lot of the show deals with the idea of the 鈥渂est self鈥�: what if you were kinder, more thoughtful, more creative, funnier and more respected? It becomes clear that while such change seems appealing, a lot gets lost if we can edit ourselves this way. What we like in people isn鈥檛 always about perfection. Flaws are endearing, an angry flare-up can lead to humour, and smoothing down those edges makes for a flat imitation of life.

The first few episodes employ the well-worn trope of identical men swapping places and trying not to get caught. So it is a relief when the series changes tack (warning: spoilers ahead) and they out themselves to Miles鈥檚 wife, Kate (Aisling Bea). Understandably, she is horrified, but also finds herself falling for her husband鈥檚 clone, only to realise that this perfect, Ken doll version of Miles isn鈥檛 what she really wants.

In the end, the show poses an interesting scientific conundrum. Kate has sex with both versions of her husband and gets pregnant. The series ends with ambiguity about the father. But if the DNA reconstruction created a new Miles with younger-looking skin and more energy, it seems plausible that his biological age is somehow different. The spa staff mentioned telomere length in the hand-waving explanation of the procedure, which made me check how that might affect a child.

Telomeres are DNA sequences at the ends of our chromosomes that shorten with age, and a child鈥檚 telomere length has been shown to correspond to the age at which their father conceived them. So Kate and the two Miles might be able to work out who was the father. But could they live with it?

Maybe living with yourself is only possible when you accept some ambiguity, or gloss over the bad to focus on the good.