Third-episode verdict: Carpoolers

The Carusometer for Carpoolers4-Major-Caruso

Oh, it’s just arse. I said just about everything that needed to be said back with episode one. There’s the germ of a good idea in there – four guys sharing a car and talking about life – and when the show does raise laughs, which it does infrequently, it’s always through the scenes set in the car.

It’s just when it steps out of the car and into the carpoolers’ home life, it becomes complete rubbish. With the slight exception of TJ Miller as the son of one of the carpoolers, there’s just no comedy in the ridiculous situations that the writers have created. There could be, but there isn’t.

Three episodes are enough. I’m out. I’m not watching it any more.

The Medium is Not Enough hereby declares Carpoolers is a 4 or “Major Caruso” on The Carusometer quality scale. A Major Caruso corresponds to “a show that David Caruso might exec produce or star in after sitting in his SUV for a few hours. After he insists one episode be entirely about the pine-scented air-freshner that hands from the rearview mirror, the cast will rebel, phoning for an ambulance claiming that he’s got carbon monoxide poisoning. They’ll be gone by the time he returns, leaving him to conduct a 25-minute long monologue instead about the need for capital punishment for anyone who forgets to indicate before changing lanes on the freeway.”

Author

  • Rob Buckley

    I’m Rob Buckley, a journalist who writes for UK media magazines that most people have never heard of although you might have heard me on the podcast Lockdown Land or Radio 5 Live’s Saturday Edition or Afternoon Edition. I’ve edited Dreamwatch, Sprocket and Cambridge Film Festival Daily; been technical editor for TV producers magazine Televisual; reviewed films for the short-lived newspaper Cambridge Insider; written features for the even shorter-lived newspaper Soho Independent; and was regularly sarcastic about television on the blink-and-you-missed-it “web site for urban hedonists” The Tribe. Since going freelance, I've contributed to the likes of Broadcast, Total Content + Media, Action TV, Off The Telly, Action Network, TV Scoop and The Custard TV.

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