Review – Not Going Out

Not Going Out – BBC One – 3 Seasons – UK / 7TWO – 9:00pm Monday – AUS

Do you love puns? I mean, do you LOVE puns? Like, really love them? Like, do you love them so much that if it were legal you would wed a pun? If you love puns that much you’ll REALLY love Not Going Out, if on the other hand you’re normal than you’ll probably hate Not Going Out as much as I did.

Not Going Out is a British comedy series that ran for what I can only imagine were three excruciating seasons on BBC One. 7TWO have decided to throw Not Going Out, or NGO as absolutely nobody calls it, up behind Gavin & Stacey on Monday nights. I don’t know whose job it was to scrape the particular barrel they found this show at the bottom of, but Channel 7 must have been so desperate for absolutely any British show to pair Gavin & Stacey with that it had to settle for this.

NGO stars Lee Mack as a douchebag who writes the jokes that go in party crackers, and to be honest I’d rather spent half an hour reading party cracker jokes than watching Lee Mack perform them. Lee lives with a woman named Kate who attends clown school and is the ex-girlfriend of Lee’s best friend Tim. Tim is played by Tim Vine from The Sketch Show which starred Lee Mack from Not Going Out.

I’m not sure when Lee Mack found the time to star in a sitcom in between appearing on every panel show ever invented but here he is. Lee spends his entire time spurting out rapid fire dead pan jokes that have no relevance to story or character development or anything ever. We get to hear real zingers like:
“These brochures are aimed at kids. ‘Are you looking for a job, innit?’”
“No, it says ‘are you looking for a job in I.T.?”

YEOWTCH.

“I didn’t want to use a ghost writer.”
“What, like Stephen King?”

SERIOUSLY.

“We got on like a house on fire.”
“Have you been cooking again?”

GAWD.

“Do you know what workshopping is?”
“When you go shopping when you’re supposed to be at work?”

This was the first time I’ve literally groaned during something I’ve described as ‘groan inducing.’ The only good joke in the entire episode was this one:
“Let’s talk about us.”
“There’s no us.”
“Let’s talk about you and me.”
“There’s no you and me.”
“Let’s talk about business like show business.”
“There’s no business like show…”

Not Going Out is such an old fashioned show with old fashioned jokes and despite being made in 2006 would have felt dated in 1976. Even the sets feel tired. I’m not saying those lines don’t work as ‘joke jokes’, as in the exact sort of jokes you would find inside a party cracker. I’m just saying that they don’t make for a compelling television show. Why would anybody give a crap about any of these characters? They’re not people, they don’t have lives, they’re just vessels designed to repeat one-liners. None of it is helped by the fact that Lee Mack is such an annoying asshat and you spend the entire time wishing he would just shut the F up.

I know this is going to be completely new and different of me to suggest but: watch Gavin & Stacey instead. It’s on at 8:30pm on Mondays on 7TWO. You really have no excuse… unless you don’t have digital, in which case you have a very good excuse. Just make sure you turn the TV off as soon as ‘tell me tomorrow I’ll wait by the window for you’ starts playing over the end credits, because otherwise you might get stuck watching Not Going Out.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Ugly

Review – Burying Brian

Burying Brian – TV ONE – 1 Season – NZ / Channel 9 – 10:30pm Monday – AUS

Burying Brian is a New Zealand comedy drama from TV ONE. Like most Kiwi series that land on our shores it too has been buried (get it?) at 10:30pm by Channel 9 in favour of Flashpoint, of all things. Usually I’d be up in arms about how just because their islands are smaller than our islands doesn’t mean their television shows are worse than our television shows. I’d probably also rant about how Australia doesn’t make quality television quite like they do in the land of the long white cloud. I’d probably even mention how Shortland Street is kind of good in a bad way. I’m not going to do that with Burying Brian because quite frankly it pretty much sucked.

Burying Brian tells the story of Jodie and her oafish, layabout, bong smoking, good for nothing husband Brian. Jodie hates Brian. Jodie’s friends hate Brian. They joke about how they should just kill Brian and everything would be better for Jodie. Then Jodie DOES accidently kill Brian and hilarity ensues. Or at least I think Brian slipping on the milk that he spilt and slamming his neck into his own broken bong is supposed to be hilarious, but then again now that I write it out it doesn’t sound that funny at all.

Jodie and her girlfriends then engage in some wacky adventures as they try to dispose of the body. Her friends are your usual hodgepodge of character traits; there’s the kooky one, the slutty one and the … ordinary one… who’s married to a cop just so they can engage in all kinds of “but what if my husband finds out?!” shenanigans. Burying Brian is very much like the British series Hope Springs in that they both follow a predictable journey in the wacky criminal world of four easily stereotyped women. Also, they’re both crap.

I guess Burying Brian is a black comedy, but it’s not very dark or very funny. In the very first scene Jodie gets her leg humped by a dog and you can pretty much settle back at that point because it’s going to be a long hour. Burying Brian delivers loads of Packed To The Rafters humour, you know jokes and situations that are usually devised by writers who say things like “I don’t think it’s funny, but I bet the public will like it.”

The comedic highlight for me was when I spotted one of the guys from A Thousand Apologies as the taxi driver, which I found funny because A Thousand Apologies is a sketch comedy series about tearing down racial stereotypes and here’s this Indian guy playing a taxi driver. Seriously, I was having a lot of trouble looking for highlights.

Burying Brian wants to be Sex & The City with shovels, Go Girls for the unhappily married set, or the Desperate Housewives of Auckland or some other such nonsense. The problem is that the wackiness on display doesn’t really build to anything. We’re kind of expecting all of these mishaps to pile on top of each other until they reach a big comedic explosion, but it all just kind of sits there. They bury Brian and then have a smoke. Adding to the problems with the show is the fact that most of the first episode takes place at night and it makes for a rather bland show to look at; all darkened houses, pitch black roads and interior car lights.

As I mentioned before I’ve often talked about mainstream New Zealand shows being better than their Aussie counterparts but I can safely say that Burying Brian is just as ordinary as anything Channel 7 served up this year. And in a week that sees often quite good The Circuit return for its second season I think I can safely give the win this time to Australia. Sorry New Zealand, you can’t win them all.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Bad

Review – Party Down

Party Down – Starz – 1 Season – USA / Movie Extra – 9:30pm Tuesday – AUS

A friend of mine twittered way back in May that “Party Down is a pretty good show.” This is a guy who found The Inbetweeners before I did, and he’s the one who insists that The Wire should hold some kind of ‘best TV series ever’ trophy (I swear, I’ll watch it. Calm down already.) So naturally when I heard that Party Down was a pretty good show I had to basically ignore that statement for seven months until Party Down was set to debut on Movie Extra in Australia so that I could figure out on my own that “hey, you know what? He was right. Party Down is a pretty good show.”

Party Down is a comedy from four guys that include Paul Rudd (of the movies world!) and Rob Thomas (of the Veronica Mars and Cupid creating world!) and two others. It revolves around a catering company based in L.A. called Party Down. This being L.A. and this being menial work the staff is naturally made up of struggling actors, screenwriters, actors, comedians, actors, or actor/model/singers (Or as one character asks “so you’re in the overall ‘handsome’ business?”)

The cast is made up of a bunch of familiar faces from all over the place. In the lead we have Adam Scott as Henry, a guy who’s given up his dreams of becoming an actor and returned to a job he left eight years ago. Ken Marino plays Ron Donald the team leader of the group who’s a cross between David Brent and a bowtie. I best remember Marino from the weird combination of Dawson’s Creek and Wet Hot American Summer. We also get the fantastic Jane Lynch from Glee, Martin Starr who of course was Bill on Freaks & Geeks, Lizzy Caplan who was the disco loving Sara on Freaks & Geeks (and was also on The Class but we won’t mention that) and Ryan Hansen who’s in the overall ‘handsome’ business.

Henry and Ron knew each other from back before Henry left to become a serious actor. Now that Henry’s back things have changed. “You’re a team leader?” “A lot can happen in 8 years.” Ron’s seemingly happy with his position in life. If he keeps going the way he’s going he may one day become part owner of an all you can eat salad place (that’s also known for their soup.) Everybody spends the first episode recognizing Henry from somewhere before wannabe comedian Casey finally figures it out: “You’re that guy! I remember you! What are you doing here?” “Do you remember me from anything else?” Henry was in one beer commercial and hasn’t had an acting job since.

Party Down is a clever, witty and most importantly a laugh out loud funny comedy. Unlike The League, Party Down doesn’t feel the need to hammer us over the head with how edgy it thinks its humour is. Yes, there are masturbation jokes, yes we may see Veronica Mars’ dad’s penis at one point, but each of those scenes are played for genuine laughs and not just “oh I get it, he’s singing an inappropriate song to five year olds, I can see how you think that’s funny” looks of slight amusement.

I look forward to the rest of the series because it turns out “Party Down is a pretty good show.” It’s just taken me seven months longer than other people to figure that out. In other news: No, I’m not going to go watch The Wire… I think there’s a Survivor: Samoa recap episode I need to catch up on…

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Alright

Follow Up – Survivor: Samoa

Survivor: Samoa – CBS – 8:00/7:00pm Thursday – Season 19 – USA / Channel 9 – 7:30pm Tuesday – AUS

Survivor: Samoa is nearing the end in the US and Channel 9 have decided to yank Survivor from their digital channel GO! and play this season out over the summer. Good choice by Channel 9 as Survivor: Samoa is in the running for one of the best seasons ever.

Of course, that ‘best season ever’ title really depends on what kind of castaways you like. If you prefer contestants like Sugar or Bob from Gabon, or Yul from Cook Islands, or Steph from Palau, or Yao Man from Fiji; loveable underdogs who defeat the evil douchebags that usually fill out the tribes on Survivor; then maybe this isn’t the season for you.

If on the other hand you like people like Boston Rob from All Stars, or Johnny Fairplay from Pearl Islands, or Richard Hatch from Borneo, or Tyson from Tocantins; egotistical ‘love to hate’ jerks who like to call themselves ‘the puppet master’; well then Samoa may just have been made with you in mind.

I have to be clear by what kind of ‘villains’ I’m referring to. I don’t mean genuine assholes like Randy or Corinne from Gabon, or Judd from Guatemala, or Coach from Tocantins. I mean the kind of guys who talk about how ‘you might as well write the check out to me right now’ and actually seem to know how to play, rather than just walking around being generally unpleasant to everybody all the time.

Now that we’re on the same page let me introduce you to Russell, or Lil’ Russell, or Evil Russell. You see, there are two Russell’s on Samoa. A big black guy with dreadlocks and an odd looking gnome of a man. We want to talk about the strange little gnome. The producers pretty much waved the white flag as soon as Russell filmed his first one on one confessional and said “you know what, you can have this, this is your season, let’s just call it Survivor: Russell.”

Yes, we may hear way too much about how he’s ‘running the show’ and about how if he ‘tells them to run, they run, if he tells them to stop they stop’. But dammit, as the season progresses you learn to love this grubby little monster and his rag tag team of tribe mates.

In Samoa the contestants have been divided into two tribes. Foa Foa who will always wear yellow and Galu who will always wear purple. After last season where we only had 16 castaways to keep track of, we’re back up to 20 random people. So there are going to be at least 6 people who we’ll see and then forget, then see again, and then forget again. 16 is the magic number, 20 is okay if you’re going to have more than just two tribes, I suppose. For Samoa however it quickly becomes apparent 20 is way too many; especially as you play along with the “which one is Brett?” game at home all season.

In the first episode before it even begins the tribes have to vote for a leader. Last time they voted for the weakest, this time it’s a leader, what’s the twist next season going to be ‘vote for whomever you think will come 7^th?’

Team Purple nominates Black Russell and Team Yellow elect Mick, who’s a doctor. These two then get to “test their leadership skills” by randomly assigning roles to various tribe mates they believe best fit the following categories: ‘strongest’, ‘best swimmer’, ‘most agile’, ‘smartest’. Mick, in a break from racial stereotypes, picks Jaison the tall vest wearing black man, as his best swimmer. Which is a good choice, because it turns out that dude is not only a law student but also plays water polo. However, he then chooses the Asian girl as ‘smartest’, which is kind of funny. The four that are chosen then have to compete in a reward challenge straight off the bat. Thank god that’s all the chosen leaders had to do, and it wasn’t something like ‘switch tribes’ or ‘pick a new tribe’ or ‘the people you chose will be sent to exile island for the remainder of the series and are automatically the final eight’ or some rubbish like that.

As I mentioned earlier there’s a little fella named Russell. Lil’ Russ is nominated as ‘strongest’ by Dr. Mick and the producers can’t wait to slap him up on screen to talk about himself and his strategy. First off the bat we find out that Russell is an ‘oil company owner’ who’s already a multi-millionaire and is only playing Survivor to show how easy it is to win. Of course that’s not a story that’s going to win him lots of friends so he tells the other survivors that he’s a fire fighter from New Orleans who survived Hurricane Katrina but lost his dog. It doesn’t top Johnny Fairplay’s ‘dead grandma’ lie, but it sure makes a run at it.

Russell then goes ahead and makes a secret alliance with every girl on his tribe. My first thought was ‘this guy is an a-hole and he’s not even going to make it to the merge’, but let me tell you it doesn’t take too long before Russell establishes himself as one of only three worthwhile characters on the whole damn island. By episode two rooting for Russell becomes more fun than watching Parvati try to correct people who pronounce her name Poverty.

The only other cheer worthy contestants are Jaison and Shambo. Oh, haven’t I mentioned Shambo yet? She’s the one with enormous mullet. Her names Sharon, she’s a marine, she has zero self awareness and people call her Shambo (it’s like a cross between Rambo and Sharon.) All Shambo has to do to become a ‘Survivor All Star’ is to make it to the merge and not become a Tocantins Sandy.

Turn away from the following paragraph if you’re a Survivor fan and were going to watch this season anyway as I don’t want to ruin the fun for you. If however you’re still on the fence about watching this season, here goes: in the second episode Russell goes looking for a hidden immunity idol around camp, but they haven’t even been told if one even exists. Everybody else kind of laughs it off, but Russell knows Survivor and damn me if he doesn’t go ahead and find it! Ha! Without a single clue or a hint that it even existed. Wow.

Okay, you can look back now. The season isn’t all jerks with big egos. Jaison gets a chance to shine in the third episode where he confronts racist Ben in a tribal council to remember. Ben is an asshole of epic proportions who calls a black girl “ghetto trash” and by golly does law school Jaison put that moron in his place. Before the merge comes along we’re offered up some great episodes, but post merge things get even more awesome.

With the season not yet over of course we’re still a long way from calling Samoa ‘the best season ever’. We have to remember that China was all fun and games until James got voted out at seven and we were stuck rooting for Courtney, of all people, over that weasel Todd, that drip Amanda and the mullet wearing lunch lady Denise. Who even remembers Denise?!

I’ve seen every season of Survivor, some even twice, and Samoa is definitely in the running for best season ever. Okay. It’s in the running for ‘second best season ever’; I think we all remember Yul, Ozzy and the greatest comeback of all time in the Cook Islands. If you haven’t watched Survivor in a while then this is definitely the season to come back on and if you watch Survivor religiously then you’re going to love the crap out of this season.

Fall TV Friday – 2005 – E-Ring

E-Ring – NBC – 1 Season (22 Episodes) – USA

E-Ring continues the 2005 NBC trend of just rehashing better ideas into sub-par packages. Surface was a weak Lost clone, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart was a poor man’s The Apprentice: No Martha Stewart, and now E-Ring tries to capitalize on the success of The West Wing by picking another random government location and setting up shop.

E-Ring opens with this self important narration: “The security of the nation depends on the men and women who serve in the five rings of the Pentagon. Before any military action can be taken anywhere in the world the mission must be planned and approved in the outer, most important, ring: the E-Ring.” If there’s one thing everybody loves to watch its military planning and bureaucracy at work.

Benjamin Bratt and Dennis Hopper, those titans of drama, star as Major J.T. Heartthrob and Colonel Eli Hardass, or as the show insists on calling them: Major J.T. Tisnewski and Colonel Eli McNulty (no relation to Detective Jimmy McNulty). Dennis Hopper is so laughably miscast as a Colonel in the Army that you have to wonder whether producer Jerry Bruckheimer was even aware of Hopper’s previous work. Dennis Hopper has spent his entire career playing loose cannons and nut jobs that it makes it near on impossible for us to believe that he could ever have the discipline needed to rise to the rank of Colonel in the army. That’s like hiring Steve Buscemi to play a by the book straight laced cop.

The B Bratt on the other hand gets lumped with the sort of generic character that can best be described as ‘a Benjamin Bratt character’. We first meet J.T. when he’s woken up by a phone call from Dennis Hopper ordering him to come to work. J.T.’s in bed with his girlfriend and she wants him to stay so she jokingly offers to ‘write him a note’, which leads to some of the dodgiest character exposition in television history. “Oh yeah, what would it say?” J.T. asks. “Dear Eli, please excuse Major Tisnewski from work today. I don’t know if you know this but it is Sunday and he just got back into town after being in Afghanistan for fourteen months so clearly he hasn’t gotten any you know what in over a year. Therefore you’ll have to wait until Monday.” I’m not sure if you picked up on that, but I think he may have been in Afghanistan for the past fourteen months. Not only that but I’m pretty sure he’s going out with a woman whose words are being provided to her by a really bad writer.

Turning up in the pilot for a ‘Hey! It’s that guy!’ moment is Ryan Cutrona, otherwise known as Betty Draper’s dad Gene from Mad Men, playing some random army guy who sits around an important looking table while looking thoughtful and important.

We quickly learn that some shit is going down half way across the world in Shanghai. A spy has alerted her handlers that she’s in trouble by using the secret code word: Dance Sport. … Sometimes a show just wants you to make fun of it. … The spy needs to be extracted to safety and naturally enough there’s only one man in the world who can save her, and that’s J.T. and his amazing ability to breeze through paperwork.

The premise of the show was summed up pretty simply in the introduction: “Before any military action can be taken anywhere in the world the mission must be planned and approved”. Of course those rules that the show set up for itself don’t apply when you’re dealing with J.T. Tisnewski. J.T. doesn’t play by no damn book. He makes his own rules. Important planning and approving is nothing compared to the guff of our man Benjamin Bratt who can just get shit done with a little determination and a wry smile.

I wish I was joking when I said that a good proportion of the ‘action’ that takes place involves doing paperwork. Quite seriously, at one point the three leads sat down and made a pro/con list as to whether it would be a good idea to extract the spy. Then they take their thoughts to the assistant secretaries of defence and discuss the options. You get the feeling pretty quickly that this show is going to be all about ‘talking through the problem.’ The West Wing also spent a lot of time going back and forth over policy, but E-Ring sorely lacks the wit of Aaron Sorkin. Instead we’re treated to banter like this between stuck up black lady Sgt. Pierce and cool as ice Major J.T. Douchenbag:

“I put out the fires that you will no doubt leave behind.”
“Do you get hazard pay for that?”

Even Aaron Sorkin at his preachy Studio 60 worst is better than this rubbish. At least the Sork would have provided us with an ensemble cast of loveable misfits and idealistic super humans. E-Ring on the other hand gives us four lead characters; and two of those characters are taken up by Dennis Hopper and Benjamin Bratt. I assume in the real E-Ring that every decision requires at least a dozen different people to look it over. I don’t believe for a second that Benjamin Bratt can just run anything through anywhere. This is exactly for sort of show that needs an ensemble cast, if only to make the whole thing seem slightly more believable.

J.T. also makes for a fairly unlikeable hero, just because despite how charming Benjamin Bratt tries to be he’s still kind of a dick. At one point he gets told information in confidence by his CIA girlfriend just so he can use that information to his own advantage later on. J.T. believes that no man should ever be left behind and he’s willing to sacrifice the lives of a dozen American submarine officers and the safety of the entire nation if this plot to take a nuclear submarine to China to save a spy is discovered. I don’t know about you but I find it a little disconcerting that the security of the nation can be messed with depending on what cause Benjamin Bratt is taking up this week.

The characters of E-Ring are so far removed from the action that at one point during the rescue of the spy we watch the NAVY SEALS radio good news to the SUB which radios to the AIRCRAFT CARRIER which radios back to the PENTAGON where our heroes all cheer. Turns out there’s nothing less exciting than a military version of Chinese whispers playing out before your eyes. I’m not suggesting that a control room thriller can’t work, because Apollo 13 and United 93 are both fantastic examples of a control room thriller at its best. The problem with E-Ring is that there seems to be no real danger. The spy was always going to get saved, Benjamin Bratt was always going to give a rousing speech that convinced everybody of what was good and just, nothing was ever really on the line.

Despite big production values E-Ring just falls completely flat trying to ring drama out of paperwork and Benjamin Bratt’s furrowed brow. It’s more like LAX than The West Wing, and whoever the moron was in the programming department that chose to pair this show up with The Apprentice: Martha Stewart should get a big slap in the forehead. The show was trying to mooch off the success of The West Wing yet nobody thought of pairing those two shows up. I think you could have moved Criminal Intent from Sunday nights and nobody would have cared; Law & Order fans will travel anywhere for their fix. But then you remember that this is NBC and making poor decisions has become their stock in trade for the last half decade; E-Ring just happens to be another failure they can toss on the pile.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Bad

Fall TV Friday – 2005 – Everybody Hates Chris

Everybody Hates Chris – UPN/The CW – 4 Seasons (88 Episodes) – USA

In 2005 UPN launched Love, Inc., Everybody Hates Chris and Sex, Love & Secrets (which was originally titled Sex, Lies & Secrets). Two out of those three titles play on better known titles. This really has nothing to do with anything, but will the title Everybody Hates Chris still be clever in five years time? Sure, back in 2005 Everybody Loves Raymond was at the top of the sitcom heap, but it’s nearly 2010 and I wonder: if Everybody Hates Chris was made today would it be titled Two & A Half Chris? What about ten years ago, would it have been called No Friends?

This pilot was the first experience I ever had of Everybody Hates Chris. I don’t know why I never got around to this Chris Rock created comedy, but it’s just never landed in my viewing box. Welcoming us to Brooklyn in 1982 is the voice of Chris Rock, who says that when he turned thirteen he thought becoming a teenager would be awesome before quickly finding out that it’s not. This sets up a loose retelling of the life of a young Chris Rock.

Chris has to travel all the way across town to an all white school because his parents don’t want him going to the nearby middle school. As Chris wonders what’s so bad about his local school we hear gun shots and future Chris quips: “Much like Rock ‘n Roll school shootings were also invented by blacks and stolen by the white man.” Everybody Hates Chris is filled with so many quotable lines that I’m just going to quote a few of them out of context right here:

“My mother hated ‘raggedy’. She always said it was better to be poor and neat than rich and raggedy… I think she said that because we were poor.”

“Mum didn’t want dad to go to work hungry, because if he goes to work hungry then he’ll be grouchy and if he’s grouchy he might call his boss cracker, and if he calls his boss cracker then we’re livin’ in the projects again…”

And my favourite when Chris says: “Since I was the oldest I had to be the emergency adult.” And his dad offers three scenes of fatherly advice:

1)      “If you smell smoke and think the house is going to catch fire, get your brother and your sister and get out of here.”

2)      “If you smell gas and you think the house is going to blow up, get your brother and your sister and get out of here.”

3)      “If you smell smoke and your brother catches on fire, get your sister and get out of here.”

I could probably sit here quoting Everybody Hates Chris all day because this is a damn fine pilot. I know I’m late to the party, but this is really hilarious and I kind of hate myself for not finding that out sooner.

Why does EHC work as a pilot? It helps that the show is packed full of laughs, but more importantly it creates a fully formed world. Pushed along by the unique creative voice of Chris Rock Everybody Hates Chris builds itself a world you want to come back to every week. You can tell from the pilot that EHC has a lot of stories to tell. It jams so much into the first episode that you want to see where else this show is going to take you. While something like Hot Properties wheezed its way to its first set of closing credits you just know that Chris Rock has dozens more yarns to spin. It also comes from a very real place. His family is poor, they struggle to get by, his dad has to work two jobs, Chris gets a hard time at school. This isn’t Freddie where we get Freddie Prinze Jnr playing a successful restaurant owner who lives with his grandmother, sister, niece, and dead brother’s wife; this is real life.

Everybody Hates Chris also makes it pretty clear it isn’t going to pull any punches. The bully at Chris’ school calls him a nigger. This was 1982, and he was the only black kid at a school full of white people so he would have been called a nigger. I know Chris Rock doesn’t need me to sit here and say ‘well done on being true to yourself and your experiences’ but seriously good on them for being honest. That kid would have said ‘nigger’, and I know there must have been a dozen network meetings before they went ahead with airing it. Chris Rock obviously has a lot of pull around the UPN offices, because a lesser series with a lesser known creative force behind it would have never been given the go ahead.

EHC debuted to a 4.6 ratings share back in 2005 which is flat out amazing; not just because it was the biggest debut in UPN history but that number of viewers kicks the ass of everything but The Office on NBC’s Thursday night comedy block. 30 Rock would kill for EHC premiere numbers. I have to say even after having only seen one episode I’m disappointed that when The CW took over from UPN they did everything they could think of to destroy Everybody Hates Chris. If only they cared about making quality programming rather than just resurrecting the rotting corpse of Melrose Place they might get more viewers.

Everybody Hates Chris is the best pilot so far from the fall of 2005. Go figure that everybody back in 2005 was right… I know How I Met Your Mother is my favourite sitcom of the now but EHC has a funnier pilot than Mother. Then again, maybe I’d give them both up for another episode of Killer Instinct. I mean, he did have that instinct for killers that drove all the ladies wild.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Good

Review – Legend Of The Seeker

Legend Of The Seeker – Syndication – 2 Seasons – USA / FOX8 – 8:30pm Monday – AUS / Prime – NZ

In April I attended Armageddon Expo, otherwise known as Nerd Fest 2009, in Wellington. In attendance were TV’s Hercules and his sidekick Iolaus, that’s right Kevin Sorbo and Michael Hurst were doing a Q&A session for the unwashed masses.  I mention this not to completely lose any street cred I may have gathered over all these years, but because they talked a bit about Legend Of The Seeker.

You see, Michael Hurst has directed four episodes of Seeker, which is a first run syndicated fantasy series much like Hercules: The Legendary Journeys was back in the day. Also much like Hercules, Legend is shot entirely in New Zealand. Hurst described Legend Of The Seeker as simply being “Hercules without the jokes.” Which got a bunch of nerd laughs from the audience. With LotS debuting in Australia on FOX8 on Monday I finally checked out the first episode and I have to say that description hits the nail right on the head.

Legend Of The Seeker is a fantasy adventure with high production values that don’t quite make up for the complete lack of originality on the story front. The legend goes that there’s this Seeker, right, by the name of Richard, who since he was a young lad has been destined for great things. The Seeker alone can destroy the evil Darken Rahl. Seeking out The Seeker is The Confessor who does a lot more seeking than the seeker does, and doesn’t do a whole lot of confessing so the name is kind of confusing. The Confessor is Kahlan, and she’s an attractive if forgettable woman who may or may not develop as a love interest for the young Richard (odds are though that she will, this is a clichéd fantasy series after all.)

Kahlan and Luke then have to seek out Obi Wan Kenobi, an old wise Jedi who can teach Luke the ways of the force, wait, sorry, I’m totally getting muddled. Kahlan and RICHARD have to seek out ZEDD, an old wise WIZARD who can teach Richard the ways of magic and nobleness… or something. Zedd’s full name is Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander. Seriously. I’m not sure what retarded eight year old named these characters, but there you go.

This being a New Zealand production the cast is filled out with Aussies and Kiwis. The only American in a lead role is Bridget Regan as Kahlan. Aussie Craig Horner delivers a try hard little hero in Richard, while in the ‘obvious but welcome’ bits of casting we get Bruce Spence as the wizard Zedd (who else), and Jay Laga’aia as Richard’s sidekick Chase. The pilot’s villain is an evil henchman named Fane, played by Andrew Robertt who tries his damndest but just can’t keep his Nu Zuland accent out of his performance.

What fantasy series shot in New Zealand wouldn’t be complete without wonderful swooping shots of scenery? The pilot opens with forests, and dunes, and a snow capped mountain that isn’t seen again. It just kind of appears as if to say ‘how awesome does this look?’ before being replaced by a series of indistinguishable forests. The fantastic locations are backed up by some better than average special effects.

The problem with Legend Of The Seeker isn’t a production one, as it would seem more than enough cash has been thrown into set design, costumes and CGI work. The problem comes solely from the fact that nobody thought to hire a decent writer. Hurst is dead on the money when he says Seeker is Hercules without the jokes. Jokes are sorely missing here, and even one laugh from a supporting character would go a long way to helping us sit through a lot of this drivel. There are prophecies, magic books, farm boys meant for bigger things; all sorts of clichés that we could digest easily if LotS didn’t take itself so damn seriously. There’s even a Sword Of Truth that made me laugh because it will never be as powerful as the Flaming Sword Of Fire.

Legend Of The Seeker is nonsense. Fantasy can only work when it convinces you that it’s not nonsense, or at the very least it distracts you from the nonsense with pretty costumes and interesting set design. Seeker can throw as many special effects at us as it likes, it’s still really silly. Merlin was just as silly, but at least Merlin had a sense of humour about itself, even if it was ever so slight.

There aren’t nearly enough fantasy series on TV but that doesn’t mean when something like this rolls along we can just give it a pass because it’s better than nothing. To be fair it isn’t awful, it’s just kind of bland. It falls into the same traps as White Collar did, where it knows what the genre is, but it doesn’t want to change it up at all. It’s happy just to tow the line. Seeker scores better than White Collar only because I prefer swords and well shot horseback chases to smug con artists and FBI agents who are married to Tiffani Thiessan.

Legend Of The Seeker is the sort of show that thirteen year old me would have really enjoyed. You know, like Hercules was to the real thirteen year old me. Life size me is willing to give it a pass, but inside I’m really dying because HBO can’t deliver A Game Of Thrones fast enough so we can all get some real fantasy, and not yet another show with scenery chewing villains and slow mo sword fights.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Alright

Review – White Collar

White Collar – USA Network – 10:00/9:00pm Friday – USA / Channel 10 – 9:30pm Wednesday – AUS

Starting on Channel 10 tonight is the new USA Network series White Collar. USA is a network made famous by light, forgettable fluff like Monk, Psych and Burn Notice. Predictably enough White Collar takes the heist genre and makes it as light and fluffy as possible. We follow the adventures of too handsome to be a real criminal Neal Caffrey, and standard issue FBI agent Peter Burke as they team up to track down international fraudsters.

There are only so many stories that exist in this world and you often wonder why a show can’t take a familiar premise and deviate even slightly from the set path. Why does Neal Caffrey have to be the greatest con artist of all time? Why can’t he be like in the top thirty or something? Why does Peter Burke have to be ‘the only guy who’s ever caught Caffrey? Why can’t he be one of fourteen guys to have ever caught a crook who’s only kind of okay at what he does?

The pilot opens with Neal Caffrey employing the greatest technique in the con artist handbook: the right shirt. Apparently the key to a great con is finding the appropriate attire for any given situation. The first scene finds him dressing as a prison guard and walking out of the prison with no hassles whatsoever. This is followed up by Caffrey acquiring a yellow jacket that is conveniently similar to the yellow jackets the parking attendants wear at the airport, where Caffrey uses this magical jacket to steal a car.

When word gets out that Caffrey has escaped Burke gets to utter lines like “We’re not going to catch Caffrey using roadblocks and wanted posters.” He doesn’t actually suggest how they can catch Caffrey, he just knows that wanted posters aren’t going to do the trick. It turns out though that Caffrey didn’t escape to commit one last big score; he just escaped to go see his ex-girlfriend who’s run away.

In predictable USA Network fashion we find out that Caffrey doesn’t like guns because he’s the nicest criminal ever. Burke then recruits Caffrey to help him solve a big ol’ mystery so the pair of them can spit buddy cop dialogue back and forth at each other for the rest of the series. These former rivals are going to work together?! Crazy! A gruff cop and a carefree criminal? How will they ever get along? Here’s another thing: why can’t we ever just have a gruff criminal and a carefree cop?

Tim DeKay and Matt Bomer make for passable leads. DeKay looks like every cliched FBI agent that’s ever existed on television, while Bomer isn’t so much a charming rogue as a smug douche. Caffrey may pass as a pretty boy actor, but he’s no criminal. George Clooney would have nailed that character, oh and he did, in all three Ocean’s movies.

Tiffani Thiessen even shows up as Burke’s wife. As his wife? Really? Shouldn’t she and Zack be skipping class only to be caught out by Screech who accidentally reveals it to Mr. Belding before they all learn an important lesson about friendship and responsibility?

Tiffani gets to run through the motions of being a TV wife. She gets to support her husband at whatever taxing career he may have, and gets to worry about him when he doesn’t get home on time. Which brings me to why I think White Collar fails as light entertainment; it is okay for a show to be so fluffy that it almost floats but there was so little to care about that I started openly wondering things like:

“Why do wives on TV always just leave food on the table so it can go cold, rather than just serve it when their husband gets home? She knows her husband’s an FBI agent. She can’t exactly be surprised when he has to work late on a case. And another thing, why are they always so disappointed when their husbands inevitably make the call that they’ll be late? Do they really think the meal is wasted? Do they not own microwaves?”

Any show that leaves you enough to time to ponder those sort of questions is not exactly grabbing your attention. White Collar opens the season with a movie length premiere, which I hate because they’re always so damn “movie length.” This show would have dragged after forty minutes, but extending it out any further turns it into a real snooze fest.

White Collar is a fine show, but it’s a predictable one that you’ve seen before. Like Psych, Monk, Burn Notice and everything else on USA it’s nice enough but it’s not exactly the sort of show that gets you excited about tuning in. I was going to rate it ‘Alright’ and call it ‘nothing special’ but after writing this review out in full I think that simply because it didn’t try in the slightest to be anything more than mediocre I can only award White Collar a ‘Bad’.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Bad

Follow Up – Peep Show

Peep Show – Channel 4 – Six Seasons – UK

Peep Show is the single most awkward comedy on television. I challenge you, the reader, to find me another show that delivers as many cringe inducing moments whilst still managing to deliver episodes jam packed with laugh out loud moments. I don’t doubt there are shows out there manufactured to make you feel uncomfortable, I just doubt that they have as many laughs as Peep Show.

Peep Show is a British sitcom that follows the somewhat pathetic lives of Mark and Jeremy, played by David Mitchell and Robert Webb of the also quite funny That Mitchell And Webb Look. Jez is a jobless layabout whilst Mark is a stuck up middle management snob. They’re the original odd couple! For six seasons we’ve followed their socially awkward and sexually frustrated lives through the first person. With every camera angle we’re either seeing the world through the eyes of Jeremy or Mark or any number of oddball’s they come across in their day to day lives. We see what they see, we hear what they think, and we make out with people when they make out with people…

Every season has been filled with wall to wall laughs, most of which are at the expense of Mark, Jeremy and their egos. If you watched the very first episode of Peep Show and couldn’t handle the scene where Mark leaves his hand on the bus seat when Sophie sits on it and then makes the executive decision not to move it because “it’s too late now” then I doubt you’d be able to survive later seasons where Mark wakes up to find himself being raped by the woman he fell asleep with.

Peep Show is a comedy about pain and misery. On The Office the painful antics of Ricky Gervais were always countered by the romantic aspirations of Tim & Dawn, but with Peep Show there’s no gooey centre. Peep Show is a raw look at the way life really is as we follow this pair of selfish assholes as they come to terms with the failure that is their existence. If that description doesn’t make you want to run out and grab your mum a copy for Christmas than I don’t know what will!

On any other show such selfish characters and painful situations would be enough to turn a viewer off for life but Peep Show is just so incredibly funny. It delivers a spot on dissection of how mundane our lives really are by spinning everyday dilemmas out to their most ridiculous, yet somehow logical, conclusions. The sixth season finds Mark and Jez both out of work, and Mark only really caring that he’s lost his job because now he won’t be able to afford the repayments on his new couch. Jez is just disappointed because if he’d kept his sales up he’d have been in line for the free Pizza Hut vouchers.

It isn’t all heavy doses of failure; Super Hanz is on standby as always to offer Jeremy a solution to his problems. He wants Jez to get a van so Jez can be a ‘man with a van’ and so the two of them can be ‘men with ven’. Things are even looking up for Mark, who may be in line for his dream job as History walk guide, where he’ll get his afternoons off for “Museums, lunch and a snooze. The big three.”

Whilst being out of work Jeremy has fallen in love with a girl who deals pot from their apartment building. He ends up buying weed three times a day just so he can see her. Of course that means he has to then sell the drugs himself just to get rid of all that excess dope. He defends this to Mark by saying “Just cause I’m dealing a little drugs doesn’t mean I’m a drug dealer.”

The sixth season hasn’t had any of the breakout moments that some of the previous seasons have had. There’s no ‘dog being eaten’ moment in this season, if you will. There are still dozens of funny lines that I just feel like repeating here, completely out of context:
“Is she from Russia or one of those other made up countries?”

“That’s not a bongo; it’s a small table in the shape of a bongo.”

And my favourite from season six:

“I’ve sold out; a little bit of me has died but you know what a lot of me doesn’t give a shit.”

Peep Show is a fantastic British comedy that is for anybody who thought The Office would have been better if it was told from the first person perspective of David Brent and if he was completely self aware, hated himself, his life and everybody around him. If on the other hand you found David Brent to be an insufferable fool, don’t even bother with Peep Show; these guys will make you cringe so much you’ll break your face.

Thoughts – Parks & Recreation

Parks & Recreation – NBC – 8:30/7:30pm Thursday – USA / Channel 7 – 11:00pm Tuesday – AUS

Parks & Recreation starts next Tuesday in Australia on Channel 7 and if you’ve read my somewhat damning review and my even more damning follow up this may come as a bit of a shock to you but: you should 100% totally watch Parks & Recreation.

Sure I went on and on about how Parks & Recreation was nothing more than a poor man’s The Office. Nothing but an un-funny clone of a loveable classic. Well, it turns out P&R has more in common with The Office (US) than we first suspected: turns out both shows have awful first seasons followed up by fantastic second seasons. Ten episodes of the second season of P&R have aired in the U.S. and each is funnier than the last (except for that one with Fred Armisen, but that rests solely on his hacky shoulders.)

Channel 7 is of course kicking off P&R with the first season (which is usually how these things go. You know, in order.) but there are only six episodes of that and I know you guys can stick with it. There isn’t a lot to like, but you do get your first taste of Ron fucking Swanson, who pretty much delivers all of the laughs in the first season. After testing out some characters and throwing some really dud jokes around during the first year the creators of P&R spent their time in between seasons really figuring out how to bring the funny.

Amy Poehler who was so grating in the first is at the top of her game in the second. Aziz Ansari who was an unlovable prick for the first six episodes… well, he’s still an unlovable prick but he becomes a touch more tragic. Sure Rashida Jones still has nothing to do but that doesn’t really matter when she’s usually surrounded by Chris Pratt making an hilarious ass of himself. Even April comes into her own in the second season and stops being such a half joke character. Also, did I mention the show has Ron fucking Swanson?

In my follow up I wrote “I went into Parks & Recreation wanting it to be my new favourite Thursday night sitcom…” before yet again dropping the words “like” “an” “unfunny” “Office” and “The” in no particular order. I know this is a big call but I’m just going to put this out there and see how it looks in the real world: Parks & Recreation IS my new favourite Thursday night sitcom.

Sure The Office is a trooper and is still a solid half hour even after six seasons. Yeah, Community has covered over some real duds with a few great episodes, culminating in the fantastic An American Tail homage in episode 10. 30 Rock on the other hand, well, there are still laughs to be found but my fanboy love is all but gone.

The biggest criticism I levelled at Parks & Recreation was that it was just like The Office, so we can also thank the comedy gods that in the second season P&R has gone to great lengths to create a show that is very much its own. Even the “Jim looks” to the camera bits from Rashida Jones have been cut down to only once every three episodes or so…

It’s a testament to how strong the second season is that it’s wiped away all thoughts that the first season could even possibly have been bad. Surely I was wrong. Surely it was all my fault. Surely I didn’t see the greatness because I was too busy imagining Dwight bursting into the Parks Department. I apologize to Parks & Recreation, it’s a really funny show and I’m so glad the second season has stepped up and delivered episodes jam packed with laugh out loud moments. Also, I’m not sure if I mentioned this but Parks & Recreation is the only show on television where you can see Ron fucking Swanson. Ron alone is reason enough to tune in. Enjoy… the second season.