Creators Mike Arnold John Eddie Priscilla Presley
Series Directed by Gary Ye
Series Writing Credits Mike Arnold, John Eddie Priscilla Presley, Cameron Squires, Asha Michelle Wilson
Series Cast
Matthew McConaughey … Elvis Presley
Kaitlin Olson … CeCe Ryder
Johnny Knoxville … Bobby Ray
Niecy Nash … Bertie
Tom Kenny … Scatter
Don Cheadle … The Commander
Tara Strong … Cleopatra
Asif Ali … Doyle
Jason Mantzoukas … Howard Hughes
Priscilla Presley … Priscilla Presley
Chris Elliott … Timothy Leary
Dee Bradley Baker … Stanley Kubrick
Fred Armisen … Charles Manson
George Clinton … George Clinton
Gary Cole … President Nixon
Simon Pegg … Paul McCartney
Kevin Noel … executive producer
Series Music by
Tyler Bates … (10 episodes, 2023)
Tim Williams … (10 episodes, 2023)
The first thing to know about Agent Elvis is that it is utterly fucking hilarious. Sharp, witty, with exquisite timing and repartee, it is a truly wonderful send-up of American society in the very early 70s.
Well, two of the main people behind this are Mike Arnold (of Archer fame) and Priscilla Presley. So they have a pretty solid grip on raunchy but intelligent humor, and the subject in question, who, if you haven’t figured it out already, is Elvis Presley. (If you haven’t figured it out, should you really be allowed to reproduce?)
The second thing to know is that despite the kind of warm fuzzy vibes most people associate with Elvis, this is very not suitable for family viewing. I suspect, given the basic premise, that if it was designed as something you could plop your five year old in front of, it would be a dismal flop, just another hare-brained effort to exploit The King.
The premise sounds weird as shit. Elvis (Matthew McConaughey) is a secret agent, 007 with a Texas drawl (yes, yes, I know—McConaughey is from Texas, and couldn’t be arsed with trying a Tennessee accent). International pop star is just his cover. He works for an outfit called The Central Bureau, under the purview of The Commander (Don Cheadle), who is a cross between Archer’s mom and Darth Vader. Commander explains his mission statement to a group of wide-eyed kids thusly: “If it wasn’t for TCB, half of you’d be toiling in a Japanese salt mine right now, the other half would be selling fetish sex for food in a Soviet Worker’s Paradise.”
Elvis’ go-between/mentor/pain in the ass is CeCe Rider (Kaitlin Olson, and no relation to that song), also known as CC with an E. She’s at least as competent as Elvis (the show breaks trope conventions in that the main characters are all competent, except for Howard and Scatter), and she’s probably smarter than Elvis. A fan of the Doors and Funkadelic, she’s unimpressed with Elvis’ act, which irks him considerably.
Two other supporting characters are Bobby Ray (Johnny Knoxville) a skinny and usually drunk redneck who can fix, fly, or fuck anything. Niecy Nash is Bertie, who is Elvis’s maternal surrogate. Those two have real-life equivalents from Elvis’ time.
Then there’s the slightly less competent characters. Howard Hughes is Elvis’ equivalent of Bond gadget master Q. However, this is the early 1970s, and old Howard has lost a step or two. He slouches around in a bathrobe, wearing tissue boxes as slippers, and his presence explains why a full bulkhead on Elvis’ Boeing is given over to jars of urine. He’s the sort who dreams of developing a device that will end civilization as we know it in order to beat a parking ticket.
Then there’s Scatter. Scatter is a full-grown male chimpanzee who is usually coked out of his mind and, well, not predisposed toward acts of kindness. If you are thinking that this is starting to sound too silly for words, you’ll have your faith in humanity, or at least this show, restored by learning that the real Elvis really did have a chimpanzee named Scatter, and the damn thing often was high on coke. If that sounds kind of hazardous (chimps that aren’t screaming with pupils the size of Donald Trump’s moral core are pretty damned dangerous to begin with) then yes, it was. Leaves me wondering how the real Elvis lived as long as he did.
Elvis is somewhat morally ambiguous. “I decided a while ago I wasn’t gonna just sit around while this country’s torn apart by all the chaos, the dirtbag hippies, the drugs, the crime. My chimp Scatter here – he just does it because he gets off to it.” Elvis’ patriotism, not to mention ethical center of gravity is put to the test as he encounters such colorful characters as Charlie Manson, Timothy Leary, Captain Kirk, George Clinton, Richard Nixon, and Paul McCartney. He is Richard Nixon’s biggest fan until they actually meet (and such a meeting actually did take place) but it doesn’t go well, winding up with Scatter snorting some lines in the Oval Office whilst perched on the Resolute.
The writing, the animation, the comedic timing, and the satirical sensibilities are all first rate. But if you’re going to watch, shoo the kids and any stray chimpanzees you might have hanging around out of the room. You don’t want to give them any ideas.
Now on Netflix.