Hard though it is now to imagine anyone except Jane Krakowski playing Jenna on 30 Rock, Tina Fey’s fellow SNL cast member Rachel Dratch originally played her in the pilot episode. Having a hard time imagining that? Well, here’s how the show would have looked with Dratch.
Of course, Dratch went on to appear in the show anyway in a number of roles, including this rather good one:
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It’s “What did you watch last fortnight?”, my chance to tell you what I movies and TV I watched in the past two weeks that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.
First, the usual recommendations: 30 Rock, Dexter, Go On, Homeland, The Last Resort, The Mindy Project, Modern Family, Red Dwarf X and The Thick of It.
So here’s a few thoughts on what I have been watching – a bit of pruning with the viewing schedule this week, but also a few changes to the recommended list:
And in movies:
“What did you watch last fortnight?” is your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV and films that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched. Since we live in the fabulous world of Internet catch-up services like the iPlayer and Hulu, why not tell your fellow readers what you’ve seen so they can see the good stuff they might have missed?
In the US: Tuesdays, 9pm Eastern/8pm Central, NBC. Starts September 11
In the UK: Not yet acquired
NBC. Comedy.
Funny how if you’d stuck those two words together in the 90s, you’d have got gold, thanks to Friends, and how if you stick them together now, despite Community and 30 Rock, you get lead. Certainly the viewers seem to think so, judging from the ratings.
Yes, that’s exactly how I started my review of The New Normal yesterday and I’m reusing it for three reasons: first, that if you’re still expecting an NBC comedy to be funny, you know that definition of madness and doing the same thing over and over again and expecting something different? That one? That’s you that is.
Secondly, you notice how I mentioned Friends, ‘ratings’ and ‘gold’ in the same paragraph there? Well, NBC has that etched on the walls of their comedy commissioning office and when the thought of Matthew Perry (Chandler in Friends) appearing in a new NBC sitcom created by one of the producers of Friends hit them, they came over all funny. Okay, Studio 60 wasn’t exactly a slam dunk, but that wasn’t a comedy. This is an actual sitcom.
Hence, the commissioning of Go On, which – and here’s my third point – can only be described as Community, one of NBC’s few critical comedy successes of recent years, even if it’s not a ratings success. However, instead of Joel McHale, you have Matthew Perry and instead of a community college study group, you have a community college support group. And instead of laughter, you have tears. No, really, because although laughs are pretty thin on the ground with Go On, I did actually weep buckets during it. And no, not for NBC’s doomed ratings and the sure and certain knowledge this is going to be cancelled within a season.
Here’s a trailer that contains literally all the jokes. And – be warned – all the bits that will make you cry.
In the US: Tuesdays, 9.30/8.30c, NBC. Starts September 11
In the UK: Acquired by E4
NBC. Comedy.
Funny how if you’d stuck those two words together in the 90s, you’d have got gold, thanks to Friends, and how if you stick them together now, despite Community and 30 Rock, you get lead. Certainly the viewers seem to think so, judging from the ratings.
In fact, ABC is largely the network to watch if you want to see something that’s actually funny, thanks to both Modern Family and Happy Endings. So what better network for NBC to emulate with a new comedy than ABC. Of course, being NBC, it’s done it all wrong.
The New Normal is the unwanted answer to the pointless question: “What if we created a sitcom based around the gay couple in Modern Family and how they adopted their baby? Except if we made them even more stereotypically gay and less interesting, and added a bland surrogate mother based on Anna Faris’ character in Friends?” Starring Justin Batha of The Hangover, Scottish actress Georgia King from Jane Eyre and The Book of Mormon‘s Andrew Rannells, it pulls off the miracle of being both inoffensive and offensive, practically its sole redeeming feature apart from a slightly intelligent script being Ellen Barkin as King’s bigoted grandmother.
Watch the trailer and see if you laugh.
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