TV reviews

In the US: Tuesdays, 9.30/8.30c, Fox
In the UK: Not yet acquired

When is an anti-romcom romcom not an anti-romcom romcom? When it’s a romcom!

You will, of course, have seen it before, the anti-romcom romcom. Sleepless in Seattle spends a lot of time deconstructing romcoms, with Rosie O’Donnell famously remarking to Meg Ryan: “A movie! That’s your problem! You don’t want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie.”

The Mindy Project dwells a lot on the inauthenticity of romcoms, as well, explicitly having our heroine, the thirtysomething single doctor Mindy Kaling (played by The Office (US)‘s Mindy Lahiri), watching When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle et al religiously since she was a little girl while critiquing their realism.

Yet it wants to have its cake and eat it, by simultaneously following the path trod by Bridget Jones, giving us a woman who doesn’t quite fit society’s female ideal (she’s Indian-American, not a size 0, not very tall and a terrible conversationalist), yet who’s clearly fated to end up with the proud, rude Mr Darcyish doctor she’s taken against from the first moment, rather than the Hugh Grant-alike she thinks she should end up with.

It’s an anti-romcom romcom that dismisses the conventions of romcoms while embracing them. Everything cancels out and it’s a romcom.

It’s also so far the only genuinely funny new comedy of the Fall season: witty, surprising, clever, with a decent cast, decent characters, a proper plot and almost no recourse to cringe comedy.

Anyone surprised that NBC turned it down? No, me neither.

Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: The Mindy Project (Fox) 1×1”

In the US: Wednesdays, 8.30c/7.30c, ABC
In the UK: Not yet acquired by anyone in the world except Canada

What’s the funniest thing in the world? In the whole wide world? Go on. You know the answer. No?

It’s foreigners, of course. Foreign people who don’t know our ways and customs. Maybe they have an accent or don’t know how to use a hosepipe correctly.

That’s comedy gold, right there, that is.

Now, there’s a theory that when the economy is bad, people like escapist TV. And with networks currently trying to capture in a bottle the magic that made some of their – and other networks’ – previous hits so popular so they can pour it into a whole new set of shows, what better plan for ABC, home of Modern Family, Suburgatory and The Middle, than to create yet another show set in suburbia, except with some escapist foreigners to laugh at instead of Americans: in this case, aliens with English accents who own an entire street in the middle of suburbia, until two of them move out and a human couple from New Jersey move in.

Yes, aliens. The ultimate foreigners. Comedy platinum, right?

Ignore the fact that “aliens live next door to us in suburbia” was The Coneheads. Ignore the fact that “normal person moves into a strange neighbourhood and discovers it’s full of sci-fi weirdos” is both Eureka and ABC’s own The Gates. Ignore the fact that these aliens and everything about them are basically the same, bar the accents, as the ones from Galaxy Quest.

Ignore those facts and focus on this: The Neighbors is comedy gold that you bought from a pawn shop, only to discover it was really electroplated nickel.

That bottle of magic? Floating down a river towards Fox, right now.

Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: The Neighbors (ABC) 1×1”

In the US: Wednesdays, 8.30c/7.30c, ABC
In the UK: Not yet acquired by anyone in the world except Canada

What’s the funniest thing in the world? In the whole wide world? Go on. You know the answer. No?

It’s foreigners, of course. Foreign people who don’t know our ways and customs. Maybe they have an accent or don’t know how to use a hosepipe correctly.

That’s comedy gold, right there, that is.

Now, there’s a theory that when the economy is bad, people like escapist TV. And with networks currently trying to capture in a bottle the magic that made some of their – and other networks’ – previous hits so popular so they can pour it into a whole new set of shows, what better plan for ABC, home of Modern Family, Suburgatory and The Middle, than to create yet another show set in suburbia, except with some escapist foreigners to laugh at instead of Americans: in this case, aliens with English accents who own an entire street in the middle of suburbia, until two of them move out and a human couple from New Jersey move in.

Yes, aliens. The ultimate foreigners. Comedy platinum, right?

Ignore the fact that “aliens live next door to us in suburbia” was The Coneheads. Ignore the fact that “normal person moves into a strange neighbourhood and discovers it’s full of sci-fi weirdos” is both Eureka and ABC’s own The Gates. Ignore the fact that these aliens and everything about them are basically the same, bar the accents, as the ones from Galaxy Quest.

Ignore those facts and focus on this: The Neighbors is comedy gold that you bought from a pawn shop, only to discover it was really electroplated nickel.

That bottle of magic? Floating down a river towards Fox, right now.

Here’s a trailer.

Continue reading “Review: The Neighbors (ABC) 1×1”

In the US: Mondays, 8.30/7.30c, CBS
In the UK: Not yet acquired

Gay men, hey? Who’d employ them? Airheads with low IQs and zero knowledge of the world outside of shoe shops and musical theatre, who’d prefer to gossip rather than work. Over-emotional racist sexual harassers who are more feminine and effeminate than the average woman.

You might as well as well sign up for your complimentary lawsuit and series of written job performance warnings as soon as you’ve said, “You’re hired” to any one of them.

That, at least, is the message you’d be taking away from US TV this fall from shows such as The New Normal and now CBS’s Partners. It’s like the last 20 years of progress have just disappeared overnight. Tom Hanks in Philadelphia? Was he even gay? In those ensembles? I don’t think so.

But for the network that currently has that study in prejudice 2 Broke Girls and the horror story that is Mike and Molly, Partners is a minor hate crime at worst. More troublesome is its unoriginality and almost complete lack of funny moments.

Starring the woefully miscast David Krumholtz (Numb3rs, The Playboy Club) as a semi-alpha male architect and Michael Urie (Ugly Betty) as his lifelong friend and work colleague, the show revolves around Krumholtz and Urie’s dominating friendship and the relationship difficulties that their partners – Brandon “I was Superman” Routh and Sophia “I wasn’t but I was in One Tree Hill – does that count?” Bush – have as a result of competing with this all-consuming friendship.

If that all sounds familiar, maybe that’s because in 1995 there was a sitcom on Fox called Partners. It had the same director (James Burrows) and the same concept (two young male architects, one of whom has a girlfriend, the other vying for his friend’s attention). The show’s producers, who made Will & Grace, are even big fans of the original.

Who needs original ideas any more? Here’s a trailer so you can bask in its desperate, unoriginal unfunniness.

Continue reading “Review: Partners 1×1 (CBS)”