DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. In her new TV show “Life & Beth,” Amy Schumer plays a woman nearing 40 who realizes that she’s living a life she didn’t really choose, and she decides to start again. Our critic-at-large, John Powers, has seen the whole series, which drops in its entirety today on Hulu. He says that for all its occasional bumps, “Life & Beth” finds Schumer still pushing hard in new directions.

JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: With really brilliant comedians, there’s nearly always a moment when they want to stop being only funny, to move beyond gags and skits and seek out new emotional, thematic or stylistic territory. Sometimes, this turns out magnificently, as when Charlie Chaplin began making feature films far richer than his comic shorts. At others, the results can be downright embarrassing. Think of Woody Allen’s ghastly attempts to be Ingmar Bergman. But such are the perils of ambition, and I admire those willing to risk them.

Take one of my favorites, Amy Schumer. Her series “Inside Amy Schumer” was one of the indispensable shows of the last decade, a hilarious, raunchy, take-no-prisoners program with a steely, feminist core. Yet rather than keep making that series forever, she pushed herself in new directions, writing and starring in the hit film “Trainwreck,” braving dramatic movie roles, even doing a cooking show with her husband.

Now she’s created and stars in an enjoyable new Hulu series, “Life & Beth,” about a woman in her late 30s trying to get back in touch with who she really is. She plays Beth Jones, a hard-drinking wine rep in New York who doesn’t really like her job or her gung-ho jerk of a boyfriend. Then something happens that shakes her like a personal earthquake. Deciding to stop being, as she puts it, the passive passenger in the car of her life, she begins a voyage of self-discovery. This takes her home to the Long Island boonies and into flashback memories of the teenage Beth who had to deal with the difficult mother she resented – that’s Laura Benanti – and the feckless father she adored, winningly played by Michael Rapaport. Back then, the one truly happy thing in Beth’s life was playing volleyball.

Over the course of 10 episodes, Beth has all manner of mini adventures. She goes to bars and funerals and farmer’s markets. She makes dirty jokes with her friends, many of them funny, and goes boating while high on mushrooms. She gets involved with a dim, hunky trainer played by Jonathan Groff and a socially awkward farmer named John, played by Michael Cera with a charming dryness. Here, her past and present merge when she and her long-estranged father have drinks after he’s helped her woo some wine buyers.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “LIFE AND BETH”)

MICHAEL RAPAPORT: (As Leonard) You got to find that thing that gives you that charge. Why don’t you do something with…

AMY SCHUMER: (As Beth) Don’t say volleyball.

RAPAPORT: (As Leonard) …Volleyball?

SCHUMER: (As Beth) Oh, my God. Come on, Dad.

RAPAPORT: (As Leonard) You love volleyball.

SCHUMER: (As Beth) I’m almost 40. What am I doing with volleyball?

RAPAPORT: (As Leonard) You could coach. They got the leagues at the YMCA. You’re good at it. Did I tell you that I’m going to quit drinking?

SCHUMER: (As Beth) Oh, that’s great. Good for you. Me too.

RAPAPORT: (As Leonard) Good.

SCHUMER: (As Beth) Yeah, I’m quitting.

RAPAPORT: (As Leonard) But not tonight.

SCHUMER: (As Beth) No, not tonight.

RAPAPORT: (As Leonard) Very soon.

SCHUMER: (As Beth) Oh, yeah. It’s at the top of my list.

RAPAPORT: (As Leonard) The tippy top.

POWERS: Now, as much as I like watching “Life & Beth,” it’s quite uneven. Beth’s story starts a tad slowly, and its many tones never quite mesh. I kept thinking Schumer’s trying to weave together two different strands of groundbreaking women’s television. One is the strand that includes “Fleabag” and “Somebody Somewhere,” whose heroines grapple with the past in order to move into the future. The other is found in “Girls” and “Better Things,” which are looser in form and built less around a clear, overarching narrative than around capturing privileged moments and scenes that often don’t add up to anything bigger and don’t need to.

I must admit that I never got fully invested in the grand arc of Beth’s attempts to let the past go. Schumer’s performance is plenty good. Her acting keeps getting deeper. Yet the whole healing narrative, complete with new boyfriend, feels tame and formulaic, especially coming from someone as original as Schumer. Beth’s story lacks the emotional and verbal pop of “Fleabag” or the deep body pain of “Somebody Somewhere” whose heroine’s wounds feel much more profound than Beth’s.

The show is at its strongest when it’s less on point, giving freer range to Schumer’s capacity for catching life on the wing – a spiky scene involving the Plan B morning after pill, funny sex talk with a Black girlfriend who now chases white Jewish men, sardonic banter with her equally screwed up sister, an explosion of post-coital rage at John, a lovely scene of Beth’s dad teaching his daughters to eat oysters, not to mention all manner of good lines. Do you have any preexisting conditions, a doctor asks her before an MRI, and Beth replies, I’m a woman.

Of course, one great danger of cutting-edge comics expanding their range is that they can wind up having their ferocious brilliance smothered by safely conventional material, as happened to Richard Pryor, a certified genius who literally wound up playing a toy. Happily, Schumer escapes that fate in “Life & Beth.” Although the cornball punchiness of its title, may give you pause, the show’s best moments prove that inside Amy Schumer, the hell-raising spirit lives on.

BIANCULLI: John Powers reviewed Amy Schumer’s new series, “Life & Beth,” now streaming in its entirety on Hulu. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new Ben Affleck movie “Deep Water.” This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF BILL FRISELL ET AL.’S “MESSIN’ WITH THE KID”)

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