In the US: Sundays, 8.30/7.30c, Fox
So I’m going to stick my neck out a bit and admit that despite all my principles and natural inclinations, I think The Hangover is a funny movie. Yes, The Hangover 2 is The Hangover again but set in Asia and a bit more racist, and The Hangover 3 isn’t funny at all and actually wants to be a heist movie. But although it’s a bit misogynistic and racist at times, The Hangover is frequently hilarious, often clever, and justifiably made stars of Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis and Ken Leung.
Unfortunately, it spawned an awful lot of clones and wannabes, aimed at different demographics, whether it was teenage boys, teenage girls, older men, older women or any other exciting group with cash you’d like to name. Fortunately, being an R-rated comedy getting its laughs from R-rated situations, it failed to attract many TV copycats.
Until now. Now, we have Cooper Barrett’s Guide To Surviving Life on Fox. They’ve even got in Justin Bartha – who played “the guy who never got to have any fun” in all three Hangovers – to play “the guy who never gets to have any fun” in this, too. They just haven’t got in any R-rated comedy. Or much comedy.
The basic premise is that Cooper Barrett (Jack Cutmore-Scott), like a lot of young men his age, has just graduated college but doesn’t know what to do with his life. As a result, he is about to embark on a career of dead-end jobs to subsidise his intensive console game and TV viewing existence. Rather than doing what his parents might have done (moving to Manhattan and meeting a lot of people his own age who really like sitting around drinking coffee all day), he moves in with two of his college room-mates (James Earl and Charlie Saxton). To pay for his high-ambitions, low-income existence, he relies on his rich brother (Bartha), who wants to live the care-free 20s he never had vicariously through Barrett and his friends partying.
Meanwhile, across the hall from them is new neighbour Meaghan Rath (Being Human (US), Banshee), who has similar issues when it comes to growing up, including hiding in the tumble dryer to avoid having to dump her boyfriend, and the group soon forms a platonic ‘bromance’.
All of this starts in 2011 with a Hangover-style party, the events of which no one can remember. After that, the subsequent events to the present day are then told in flashback, the series’s somewhat nebulous concept being that in a Ferris Bueller/Parker Lewis-style, Barrett gives us the lessons in life that he’s learnt from experiences such as being kidnapped by some UFC fighters, dealing with his stupid room-mates flatscreen TV obsession or kissing Rath.
He’s not learnt very much so far, though, so it’s not so much a Guide To Surviving Life as a guide to things you shouldn’t do that you already knew you shouldn’t do. Maybe that’s the same thing on Fox.
Barrett himself is quite a dull character. He would be the Bradley Cooper character of the piece, but that’s all been transferred to Bartha, leaving no personality except well meaning intentions. Bartha’s more amusing but largely through being older yet being in young situations, rather than because of any good lines he gets. Earl and Saxton have thankless Hangover cast-off roles, too – Earl being the spaced-out Galifiankis character who’s an a-hole and gets everyone into trouble, Saxton being the Ed Helm pushover nerd who no one likes and is put upon by women.
The show’s saving grace – and almost sole departure from the Hangover formula – is Rath, who provides a much-needed female viewpoint and charisma, even if she doesn’t get as much to work with as Zooey Deschanel does in a similar situation in New Girl.
Given how offensively bad/offensive other Hangover clones have turned out, Cooper Barrett’s Guide to Surviving Life is by no means awful and even has the odd moment of charm, wit and intelligence. But those moments are rare and there’s too little individuality or originality to the show.
Most importantly of all, Cooper Barrett might want to offer us his guide to surviving life, but I’m not sure anyone would want to follow his advice.