Gary Russell, in case you don’t know, used to edit Doctor Who Magazine, wrote several Doctor Who books, co-founded Big Finish and ended up working on the show itself during the Russell T Davies years.
https://twitter.com/georgiaEtennant/status/957666470233870337
Let’s put our cards on the table here: Corporate is without a doubt the funniest Comedy Central programme I’ve ever seen. I’ve had a look through the entire TMINE review database and Corporate is hands-down the funniest show I’ve reviewed on the network.
Four episodes in, that’s still true. A biting, nihilistic look at working for a giant corporation, it alternates between pastiching the soul-destroying, abusive nature of corporate culture and the desire for the sweet release of death from said culture.
Episode 1 introduced us to evil company Hampton Deville, its boss Lance Reddick, its put-upon and putting-upon junior executives Matt Ingebretson and Jake Weisman and the oppressive mid-tier executives Anne Dudek and Adam Lustick. Episode 2 then gave us a look at what the company actually does. As well as trying to sell a tablet eight times larger than an iPad, it seems it actually also makes cut-price weapons.
As its title The Powerpoint of Death suggests, the episode is mainly about Ingebretson’s work creating a PowerPoint to pitch the start of a new war to the CIA so Hampton Deville can sell it cheap weapons. It’s full of great one-liners, such as Reddick’s declaration that having lost the Iraq war contract to Philip Baker Hall, never again will he allow another man profit from destabilising the Middle East. The end-credits scene is probably the funniest thing you’ll ever see about fonts in a TV show, too, but a minor ongoing gag also involves all the effort and exploitation that goes into producing bananas, purely so they can sit and go brown in a communal work room.
Episode 3 then gave us various attempts by the amoral Weisman to trade his prescription drugs with employees for better perks. When perky guest star Aimee Mann shows up, he makes it his mission to make her unhappy and a pill addict, purely so he can get her parking space.
Episode 4 doesn’t let up either, taking on Banksy and manufactured anti-corporate rebellion with ‘Trademarq’ and craft beer. “People hate corporations, but they love buying things from us,” declares Reddick, before commissioning a subsidiary to sell anti-Hampton Deville merchandise to anarchist protestors.
Corporate is a hugely cynical, smart, bleak and very funny look at modern day capitalism. It’s not 100% accurate, sometimes feeling more like its critiquing the cultures of small businesses than large businesses, but it’s well worth your time and is probably the first jewel in Comedy Central’s crown.
Barrometer rating: 1
When Burden of Truth started, I did mock it a little. It sees big city lawyer Kristin Kreuk return to the small town where she grew up to deal with a claim that an HPV vaccine is making local girls sick. When she gets there, she soon finds:
Soon, she’s deciding to switch sides and find out the true cause of the problem – so that she can sue the heck out of whoever’s causing it and stop people spitting at her whenever she walks past.
Anyway, I mocked it a bit, because firstly, we had ‘lawyer as epidemiologist’, with our Kristin apparently keen to do all the science herself. Secondly, we had such obvious emotional manipulation going on, together with an obvious romance being set up with small town boy turned lawyer Peter Mooney, that it felt like we were in the middle of a Hallmark Channel movie.
Oddly, though, the show has since decided it really is going to be about epidemiology. I mean really. Episode three actually had a hydrologist turn up. Not just for a couple of minutes to hand over a report, mind, but for the whole episode. He explains ground water flow and sources, he does experiments and tests. He drills holes.
Meanwhile, Kreuk seems to know – from previous cases, rather than Wikipedia – some actual law and some actual science: biology, chemistry, physics. She knows about benzene and its side effects. She’s coordinating everything, she’s looking at real-world implications for legal precedents, she’s acting like an actual professional with experience and skills.
Indeed, even by the end of episode three, the quest to find the true source of the problem afflicting everyone is still ongoing. This might take all season. This is… practical science and practical law. Gasp.
It’s like I started watching one of the Good Witch movies, only to discover that it was a guidebook to modern pagan rituals, complete with a discussion of the correct way to honour the triple goddess. It’s genuinely bewildering.
I’d probably keep watching on the strength of the science, in fact, were it not for the writing of these small town characters. They’re dumb. To be fair, so are the obvious moustache-twirling big city characters. It’s only Kreuk, Mooney and their contractors showing signs of mental capacity. Everyone else is either sketchy or on the verge of shouting out another emotive speech that explains Very Big Things. Or both.
And dumb is what they are.
So Burden of Truth‘s title wasn’t just an obvious play on words about its plot – it was actually a description of the show’s own problems with its characters, who have so much truth that they have to share it, obviously and frequently.
Barrometer rating: 2
Back when Girls first aired, I gave it a thumbs down, based on the general premise that although it was witty, well written and probably reflected a certain demographic very well, I wanted all the pampered, cosseted characters to die a fiery death. Sure, they weren’t doing much that was different from what male characters had been getting away with in other shows, but I’d usually wanted those male characters to die fiery deaths, too, so at least I was consistent.
The proof of this is Alone Together, as I want both the pampered, cosseted lead characters to die fiery deaths. I didn’t want this to happen at first: episode 1 I found surprisingly funny – so funny, I was prepared to revise my normally sacrosanct rule against friends writing and starring in TV shows together. It saw two millennial friends (Esther Povitsky, Benji Aflalo) living in LA realise that they’re not exactly 10s in the scheme of things, particularly not for LA, so do their best to help each other date, knowing they’ll probably die alone anyway. Meanwhile, although the idea makes both nauseous, everyone else thinks they’re perfect for each.
All of which worked quite very nicely. They were obviously friends but they had a lovely line in put downs and self-mockery. The show had edginess to it, and it really explored its Los Angeles location well.
Episode two, however, made me just hate these millennial dicks. They weren’t just dicks to each other, they were dicks to their friends, to the extent it was impossible to tell why anyone would be in their vicinity. They also weren’t very clever about it, even if they thought they were.
The latest episode was an improvement on that, with our ‘heroes’ a little bit better to one another and to others, and their put-downs once again self-depreciating and smart. The trouble is, I now hate them both. It’s also not about dating, which given the show is called Alone Together is something of a swizz.
All of which means that I’m firstly going to stick to my original rule and secondly come up with a new rule: stick to your show’s premise unless you’ve got a really good route map to help you. Oh, and thirdly, that I’m not going to watch Alone Together any more. They’ll have to watch it by themselves.
Barrometer rating: 3
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