TV reviews

In the US: Wednesdays, 8/7c, ABC

There are plenty of reasons to sorry for Kelsey Grammer. Let’s confine ourselves to the TV ones, though.

He’s been in two of the most popular and best sitcoms in history: Cheers and Frasier. So, everything since has been something of a comedown.

He’s been involved in some truly awful drek since, including Back To You. You’ve got to feel sorry for him for that.

And whatever he’s been in, he’s played a character you’re not exactly supposed to love. In fact, he always plays some pompous twat who has to experience major humiliation with almost every episode.

Now we have Hank, in which Grammer becomes a human piñata for America’s viewing pleasure: a former CEO ousted from his company and forced to downsize in the country. He gets a crap house, a family bitter with him for never being there, and an everyman brother-in-law who takes great pleasure in seeing the misery that Hank now has to endure.

And it’s rubbish.

Poor old Kelsey.

Continue reading “Review: Hank 1×1 (US: ABC)”

In the US: Mondays, 9/8c, NBC

Here in the jolly old UK, we have a programme called Casualty. It’s set in a busy A&E department (aka ER) and has been running for over two decades, yet is even more formulaic than House*.

Basically, each episode starts with a load of normal everyday people going about their business. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, and then… something really ridiculous happens (car flips over while stationary, man swallows Amazonian tree frog while walking a dog, woman attacked by TB-crazed badger in the middle of a cinema) that results in horrific and terrible wounds, requiring the immediate arrival of an ambulance full of brave paramedics – who then spend most of the time agonising about their soap opera-like relationships.

Trouble is Casualty is very badly written, very badly acted and looks appalling since the budget’s about £2.50 a week.

Well, hey ho and away we go, America has its own version of Casualty with two big differences to ours:

1. The cast is hotter
2. The production values are better

But that’s it’s. Otherwise, they’re the same “dumb as a box of hammers” show.

Continue reading “Review: Trauma 1×1”

In the US: Fridays, 8pm, Fox

I really want to know who does the commissioning for Fox’s comedy division. Do they have a background in the theatre? Do they love hard-hitting tragedies?

What’s up with them basically, because they’re not hiring people who can write funny.

Take a look at Brothers, another ‘sitcom’ that like its Fox antecdent Happy Hour is really a drama with a laughter track: a football player has to return home from New York to be with his family, when his mother calls to tell him his father’s had a stroke. Back in Texas, he has to confront his bitter, wheelchair-bound brother, whose own sports career was destroyed thanks to a car accident and whose restaurant is now failing.

But it soon transpires that the prodigal son’s manager has run off with all his money, leaving him bankrupt, the only asset being the house he bought his parents. So he chooses to return to living with his family, to join his brother in running the restaurant, and to help look after his dementing father.

It’s like Ibsen or Chekov, isn’t it?

Continue reading “Review: Brothers 1×1-1×2”