US TV

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)”