Year: 2010

In the US: Wednesdays, 8.30/7.30c, ABC
In the UK: Not yet acquired

It’s a good job that the Carusometer is such a fault-tolerant instrument of detection. Were it not so robustly built, it would have passed a straight five on every episode of Better With You, thanks to the cringe-worthy studio audience that not only blots out all the jokes with its laughter, but forces the actors to over-act something colossal.

Yet Better With You is easily the funniest of this season’s new comedies. It’s very traditional: it’s multi-camera with, yes, a studio audience; it’s an ensemble of characters delivering one liners, with very few guest actors; the characters are largely thick as two short planks; most of the jokes are about well-trod relationship issues and make you feel like you’re still trapped in 1995.

But despite that traditional quality, it’s funny. The dialogue’s good, the cast are good, it can be quite sweet (episode two’s "firehouse vision scene", for example), it does touch on the occasional deeper topic (episode three, for example, hinges on a family Christmas card and whether elder daughter’s boyfriend of nine years qualifies as family or not because he’s not married to her) and it never veers into anything too vicious (cf Rules of Engagement). It’s just you have to survive all those traditional qualities to get to the funny.

I’m not sure I’d entirely recommend it, since there really isn’t that much new going on here. But it’s very likable and you are guaranteed laughs with it. What more should you ask of a comedy?

Carusometer rating: 2
Rob’s prediction: Will be lucky to last a season, but might surprise us all

In the US: Tuesdays, 9.30/8.30c, Fox

Three episodes in and there’s just a chance that Running Wilde is finding its feet. After a shaky start that was largely redeemed by Peter Serafinowicz, episode two proved to be not quite as funny – indeed, "pretty bad" would be a good summary with Peter Serafinowicz being the episode’s only good feature.

But now episode three has shown up on our collective doorsteps and while we’re still not in hysterical territory, this was actually quite a funny episode – even if most of that funny was, you guessed it, thanks to Peter Serafinowicz and despite KFC having possibly the biggest, most obvious smack-to-the-face bit of product placement since the 1950s.

The show’s main difficulty is Keri Russell’s character. If your character is essentially a humorless green activist, be not surprised if that character doesn’t raise many laughs. Episode three showed us the problem wasn’t Russell, since here we had her character temporarily turn evil and be very funny. Arnett’s not quite hitting the comedy highs we know he’s capable of, and where he does succeed, it’s when he’s with Serafinowicz, who manages to make every line he delivers funny – when the line is actually funny (eg when he’s offering vodka to small children) it’s even better.

So there’s a chance that the series is settling down now. It’s still not the funniest new show on the box and unless Russell’s character gets a revamp some time soon, it probably never will be. But it is the sharpest new comedy and has enough signs of promise that I’m going to stick with it, even if it’s likely to get cancelled soon thanks to poor ratings. But that might just be because of Peter Serafinowicz.

Carusometer rating: 3
Rob’s prediction: Probably going to get cancelled before the end of the season unless there’s a sharp increase in the funny quotient