Archive for the ‘ Comedy ’ Category

Girls: Season 1

girlsThere was a problem with my recording of one of the last few episodes of Girls, where it didn’t record the dialogue track. It had the background noise, sound effects and music; but although I could see the characters moving their mouths, there was no sound coming out. The thing is that I watched nearly 10 minutes of the episode before I realised there was a problem and it wasn’t just an affectation. That was the moment that I realised I didn’t just not like the show, I really couldn’t stand it.

It took me until episode 9 of the 10 episode season to come to this conclusion because all the critics seemed to think that Lena Dunham (star, writer and director) is a fresh new voice, speaking for an entire gender and generation. I was desperately not wanting to admit that I was so out of step with everyone and that possibly my lack of ability to understand the show was some sort of nail in the coffin of my youth. After due consideration though, even if it does make me Old, that I just don’t believe these girls are representative of a significant section of the population and if they are, then I really fear for humanity.

The four titular girls range from annoyingly bland through to hatefully unpleasant. Hannah (Lena Dunham) is a twenty-something graduate who believes that she has it in her to be the ‘voice of her generation’, but the closest she comes to publication is when someone steals her diary and turns it into a song out of spite. Hannah shares a flat with her college friend Marnie who spends most of the season in a relationship that she hates, until they actually split up and she realises that she wants him back, then changes her mind again and then is miserable because she’s alone. Shoshanna is an insufferably immature Sex and the City fan and Jessa would probably describe herself as ‘bohemian’ but is in fact flaky, unreliable, selfish and destructive to everyone around her. Hannah’s boyfriend is also a regular appearer, he’s a self-centred, arrogant, obnoxious artist who criticises everyone he meets because they’re not ‘being true’ or some such tripe. The only thing more annoying than him by himself, is when he and Hannah are together, despite the fact that they are completely and utterly, catastrophically and apocalyptically wrong for each other.

All the characters are insufferable. Drifting around whining about their own lives and judging everyone else’s. I could barely stand to spend half an hour a week in their company, let alone imagine having to be their friend or work with them. Hannah is a particularly hateful individual. She whines when her parents stop paying her rent, she whines when her acquaintances are more successful than her, she whines that an ex-boyfriend is now gay, she whines when the guy she’s seeing doesn’t act like a boyfriend and then she whines when he does. Then she whines about the fact that her best friend calls her on her whining. She boasts about her talents and calling as a writer but there is absolutely no evidence of her actually writing anything or attempting to make a career out of anything other than just endlessly whining. I also hated her dress sense and endlessly wanted her to comb her hair.

I’m not really sure whether it’s supposed to be a comedy or a drama, each episode is half hour which usually indicates a comedy, but I didn’t find it funny very often. Not only that, but it’s actually downright uncomfortable to watch a lot of the time thanks to the gratuitous sex and nudity, it may well be more ‘natural and honest’ than is usually shown, but I can live without that level of reality.

I wanted to like this show. I wanted it to be fresh and original, I wanted it to be an honest look at twenty-something women today. Given that almost every other review seems to think it’s just that, raving about the show and Lena Dunham as some kind of paradigm shifting truth, I am perilously close to just concluding that I’m utterly out of touch and should just shut up.

2012
12/24
CATEGORY
11-12 Season
Comedy
1 comment

House of Lies: Season 1

House of LiesMy evaluation of the pilot of House of Lies was “yes, but with some reservations” which was good enough for me to set the series link on it once it finally arrived on Sky Atlantic. At the end of the 12 episode season I haven’t really changed my opinion – “yes, but with some reservations”.

The show maintains the shameless ‘wrongness’ that it introduced in the pilot. The characters (both regular and one-shot) are all after power and money and will screw over pretty much anyone to further their sky-high ambitions. They lie, manipulate, threaten, bribe and entrap to get what they want, and the only excuse for that behaviour is that everyone is doing exactly the same to them. Whenever someone displays a rare flash of conscience, they are immediately pounced on by the other members of the pack and inevitably ends up far worse off. It’s a brave direction for a show to take and it makes House of Lies unusual and intriguing, although of course not somewhere you’d want to spend too much time.

The other thing that’s interesting and unusual is the style of the show, particularly the ability of Don Cheadle’s character to break the fourth wall, talking directly to the audience and forcing upon them a connection to the world within the show. It’s a tricky thing to pull off and it’s done beautifully here, making good use of the extremely charismatic Cheadle. I was worried that it might get old, particularly the way the action occasionally pauses and Cheadle walks through a frozen scene, but it stayed fresh and entertaining all the way through.

The only thing that causes me pause with the series is that some of the characters are phenomenally annoying, and far too ridiculous to be credible in even this environment. The two male team members (whose names I still can’t remember) are no more than idiot college boys (one frat boy, one nerd), with utterly no redeeming qualities and every time they were on screen I was annoyed. Similarly Cheadle’s ex-wife and his ‘nemesis’ who is trying to take over the company were utterly over-the-top pantomime villains. Those four people just didn’t feel like they should be in the same league as Cheadle or Kristen Bell, both of whom had complex and layered characters.

As comedies go, it’s not really a “rolling in the aisles” kind of show, more a “knowing snort and cynical chuckle” affair, mind you I rarely find the comedies labelled as hilarious to be anything of the sort. The majority of House of Lies is witty, slick and blackly funny. There is however a minority thread of crudeness that runs through it, which can’t quite be forgiven just because some of the characters roll their eyes at it. The half hour format works well with the plots dispensed with brutally fast and the irritating elements never quite getting enough screen time to push me into switching off.

I can see that House of Lies isn’t for everyone, the subject and characters are a pretty tough sell. But I do think that it’s innovative, challenging and entertaining in a way that other shows that get more attention actually fail to deliver (see my review of Girls later this week). I also think that Don Cheadle’s Emmy Award winning performance alone is enough to make this show watchable, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes in season 2.

2012
12/20
CATEGORY
11-12 Season
Comedy
1 comment

Community: Season 1

CommunityWay back in 2009, I hadn’t yet given up on watching pilots of comedy series, so did actually review the Community pilot and liked it. However despite the critics absolutely adoring it, I didn’t watch it, not least because it was buried on some obscure channels in the UK.

Jump forward three years and a couple of friends forced the first season dvd upon me and nagged until I watched it.

It was good.

It’s the kind of show that could relatively easily be dismissed, but the more attention you pay, the more it rewards you with a lot of exquisitely crafted writing that takes a sideways look at everything and crafts spoofs of just about every subject under the sun.
The episodes which are built around referencing genres or specific films/shows are the high point of the series. Each one is entirely respectful, as if the writers genuinely love whatever they are pulling apart, poking fun without being mean or snide. The other clever thing is that you don’t necessarily need to be a fan of the target, or even know anything at all about it, because the story, characters and jokes are all well enough done that the show is still entertaining.

The show doesn’t always manage to hit the right balance for me, the characters walk a very fine line between being quirky and ridiculous. It’s often not really believable that Chevy Chase’s Pierce hasn’t been lynched by his fellow students, or that anyone tolerates Shirley’s simpering for more than one class. Mind you I can forgive most of those problems because while not all the characters work, the writers did introduce us to Abed, who sort of floats through the series like a media obsessed soothsayer. Rather than have the biggest geek be completely disassociated from reality, in many ways he’s actually the member of the group most in touch with the real world, quietly manipulating everything around him. He isn’t the star of the show, but he is the heart and soul of it.

With each episode lasting just 20 minutes or so once you strip out the adverts the episodes never outstay their welcome, each carefully constructed to build up towards a satisfying ending – be it a sweet one or a cynical one. It does exactly what a comedy should do, makes you laugh and realise how daft real life is.

Also – any show that generates a gag reel almost as long as an episode has to be worth a look.

2012
12/06
CATEGORY
09-10 Season
Comedy
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Last Tango in Halifax and The Secret of Crickley Hall – Pilots

I’d not had a great day and I retreated to bed with my laptop to catch up on a couple of new BBC series thanks to the power of the almighty iPlayer. Miraculously, this turned out to be the perfect cure for my bad mood!

First up was Last Tango in Halifax. This is an easy going six-part series which is well and truly embedded in the ‘comfortable’ zone of watching. Celia and Alan were almost sweethearts at school, but it didn’t work out. They both lived their lives and raised a family, now 60 years later they reconnect via facebook and rather nervously arrange to have coffee. Each of their daughters are meanwhile having their own problems with their families.

There’s nothing stressful about Last Tango in Halifax, it’s easy going, amiable, sweet, funny and just utterly lovely. Anne Reid and Derek Jacobi are perfect as people who have plenty of experience of life, but are also adorably nervous about a first date. Sarah Lancashire and Nicola Walker are equally great as women living very different lives, but each just trying to make the best of everything. The whole thing is full of an easy going humour and charm that made me completely fall in love with it.

After that success I wasn’t optimistic that my luck would hold for the second new series of the evening, The Secret of Crickley Hall. Mother of three, Eve Caleigh, nods off while her son Cam is playing in a park, she wakes up and he’s gone. 11 months later, Cam is still missing and the family relocates to try and escape the pressure of the upcoming anniversary. Unfortunately they pick Crickley Hall, a house with a disturbing history, gradually revealed through flashbacks to 1943 when it was an orphanage with a very strict master. The history carries through to the present and the Caleigh family start experiencing Weird Stuff.

This is a shorter series, just 3 episodes, and is moving along a lot faster, well paced so that the tension is gradually built up, but doesn’t become unbearable. The Caleigh family is extremely likeable and believable, both in how they’re dealing with the grief of their missing son and how they approach the weird events of the house. Suranne Jones (the Tardis!) Eve believes that she has a psychic connection with her son which gets a little wishy-washy, but it’s well balanced by the way the rest of the family treat her – they don’t necessarily believe her, but they are complete supportive. Maisie Williams as the older daughter steals every scene that she’s in, much as she does as Arya in Game of Thrones. It’s impossible not to like this family, they’re smart and funny, tightly knit without being saccharine and they’re really doing their best to get through the terrible uncertainty and grief.

The period elements aren’t quite as strong. Douglas Henshall and Sarah Smart are stuck with some pretty hammy dialogue and they come rather too close to pantomime villains. Similarly Olivia Cooke as Nancy Linnet, the young teacher worried for the safety of the pupils comes across as a rather too perfect rescuer. But balanced by the extremely ‘real’ feeling modern sections, the flashbacks aren’t too bad. The whole thing combines into a sort of easy-going creepiness that might make you jump a couple of times and keeps you paying attention, but isn’t going to keep you up at nights.

Last Tango in Halifax is on Tuesdays and The Secret of Crickley Hall is on Sundays and both are available on iPlayer.

Other Reviews:
The Telegraph on Last Tango in Halifax – The ways in which this story of late love might have gone wrong were numerous, but with the help of beautifully nuanced performances from her cast, Wainwright steered an entertaining course between the Scylla of sentimental regret and the Charybdis of patronising caricature.

The Independent – [Last Tango in Halifax] triumphed because it wasn’t about old people or even elderly romance, but love. This (sentimental) 30-year-old loved every minute.

The Telegraph on The Secret of Crickley Hall – It all clipped along quite watchably, but – unpardonably for the horror genre – with no sickening sense of jeopardy or threat.

Den of Geek – The Secret of Crickley Hall is entertaining and involving stuff. Nancy and the Caleighs are such sympathetic leads that the horrors of Crickley Hall have a satisfying heft of consequence.

2012
11/23
CATEGORY
12-13 Season
Comedy
Drama
Families
Pilot Reviews
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The Thick of It: Season 4

I don’t seem to have reviewed any of the previous seasons of The Thick of It, which I thought was odd given how much I enjoy the show and my obsession with reviewing absolutely everything. Then I started trying to write the review of the latest (and probably last) season and realised that I’d not done so previously because it’s really hard to do! There are so many difficult angles to cover and this season even more than previously I’m really torn, because I found it utterly compelling, yet really didn’t like it.

First up, it’s very hard for me to watch this show, let alone review it, because it all strikes a bit close to home. In the three years since the last season of The Thick of It, I’ve joined and then left the civil service, and I can tell you that the series really is perilously close to a documentary at times. The fact that I’m no longer a civil servant is not unrelated to the fact that the ineptitude and focus on looking good rather doing good that’s shown in The Thick of It is only a mild exaggeration, not a fiction. Watching my own work traumas play out on television each week was at the best of times, not fun and at the worst of times downright depressing.

On top of that you’ve got a level of dejection about the general state of politics in the UK at the moment. I’ll skip too much of a rant about that, but when the very same policies that are being proposed by our erstwhile politicians are being presciently written in The Thick of It as jokes and ways to distract attention, you can’t help but get a bit sad about the whole thing. Real-life politics appears to be muscling in on comedy-politics’ ideas, and while that’s not the show’s fault, it does make it rather harder to laugh.

Aside from my discomfort however, I felt there were wider problems with the show this season. The structure of the series was just plain odd. Fully half the cast was absent from the first episode, and given that it was the ‘good’ half of the cast, the result was a very poor start. But then we swept to the opposition side and with Nicola, Ollie and Malcolm it felt like the good old days again, the characters are extreme but not unbelievable and there was a good balance of politics and humour. Every time we returned to the coalition side it felt weak and ridiculous. So many of the characters were just painfully over the top, I actually had to mute sections of it just because I couldn’t stand to listen to Terri, Stewart or Phil a lot of the time. With over a dozen major characters fighting for time subtlety went out of the window a lot of the time, and with it went credibility and coherence.

Eventually we reached the double length inquiry episode that everything had been building towards, a great hour of television, astonishingly talented actors just conveying their characters without any distractions beyond a glass of water to play with. Watching the characters each try to score political points, then squirm as they tried to protect themselves and eventually outright lie was fascinating and painful. BUT great as that episode was, it just didn’t justify the other 6 episodes being so weak.

I also have to confess that at times I really was quite confused about what was going on, what the truth really was and whether any of the plots were anywhere near realistic. Would there really be an inquiry into leaking? Surely not – no one in government would want it, and the press wouldn’t really call for it either given how much they benefit. Then the questions of the inquiry drift off into the wilderness and there’s still no answer about who actually leaked either the medical file or the email chain. Did Malcolm really leak a “civilian’s” file, and even if he did was he really so stupid or arrogant that he got caught? I kept waiting for everything to be explained in the final episode, Malcolm’s master plan to be unveiled, but instead we were just left to watch as he went a bit loopy and then… just as he took a breath for his final glorious tirade putting everyone in their place, he just faded away.

I can’t say that I’m sad that this was the end of Thick of It. Be it the change in government which pulled their characters apart , my own increased familiarity with the subject, or just the fact that the fictional policies and politicians are way too close to the reality to be funny, but this season made me more sad than entertained. Whereas previously the colourful language seemed eloquent and creative, now it felt vicious and bullying. There were still some hilarious lines and stories, and some truly incredible performances (Peter Capaldi and Rebecca Front were absolutely amazing), but I think the show doesn’t really work any more.

The Thick of It is available on iPlayer until the 3rd November or shortly after on dvd

2012
10/31
CATEGORY
12-13 Season
British TV
Comedy
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Sports Night: Season 1 & 2

As I finished watching the pilot of The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin’s brand new drama set behind the scenes of a cable news show, my most over-riding thought was “wow, I really miss Sports Night”. You see back in the depths of time (1998) before The Newsroom or Studio 60 were even a spark in his brain, Sorkin created his first television show, a half hour comedy drama about a late night sports news show. To jump to the end of the story, the show wasn’t a massive ratings success and it was cancelled after two seasons. (Although according to Wikipedia other cable channels considered picking it up, but Sorkin chose to let it go so he could focus on something called The West Wing instead.)

A Sorkin fan watching Sports Night will feel right at home, in both a good and bad way, everything that you might love and everything that you might hate about Sorkin is right there. The dialogue is pure Sorkin, unashamedly smart, fast paced banter combined with incredibly powerful and inspiring speeches. His frequent collaborator Thomas Schlamme sets the directorial style in the pilot with the familiar long panning shots and infamous ‘walk and talk’ scenes touring the vast sets.

The real strength of the series though is in its amazing ensemble cast. Before any of them were really famous Sorkin paired up Peter Krausse (Six Feet Under, Parenthood) and Josh Charles (The Good Wife) as Casey and Dan the show’s anchors and added the icing on the cake with Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives) as the show’s producer Dana. The three of them really are brilliant, the friendship/romance of Dana and Casey and the partnership between Dan and Casey are beautifully played. The rest of the regular cast and guest stars are dotted with familiar names and faces – Robert Guillaume (Benson!) provides some of the gravitas, Joshua Malina (The West Wing) delivers Sorkin’s fast paced dialogue like no one else and Sabrina Lloyd somehow manages to be convincingly an adorable mess and terrifyingly competent all at once. The guest list features half the cast of The West Wing, Desperate Housewives and is topped off with the incomparable William H. Macy stealing the show in the 2nd season. I even fell in love with Chris, Dave and Will the three technical guys who barely get a line each per episode.

The only problem with the show is when the writing lurches from comedy to drama, and usually fumbles the ball. There’s not enough time in the 22 minute run time of each episode to introduce and explore serious subjects appropriately, and attempts to run them over multiple episodes doesn’t really work either. The early season 1 story about a sexual assault against a journalist was jarringly out of tone with the otherwise light-hearted theme and then equally abruptly dropped and never mentioned again. The exploration of Dan’s depression in season 2 also felt like it rather came out of nowhere and was only salvaged by Josh Charles’ charm and talent.

Re-watching this series, I burnt through 45 episodes in about 2 weeks. The short episodes are perfectly suited to Sorkin’s punchy dialogue, rarely giving you a chance to breath. It’s genuinely funny in a way that’s smart without being smug and witty without being self-involved, I laughed at the jokes about sports and television production and it didn’t matter in the slightest that I have very little idea about either of them. I can’t really be that disappointed that the show was cancelled if it meant that The West Wing could exist, but it’s a cruel world that means I can’t have both.

Dan: I got to tell you, at this point the length of this conversation is way out of proportion to my interest in it.

Casey: I’m particular about cake. And I have to say, it’s been my experience that men buy better cake than women. I’ve found that women tend to get these yoghurt-frosted low-cal things laced with a rum and fruit concoction that make eating cake into something you do to be polite.

Dana: There’s three things that I’m doing. I’m losing things, I’m forgetting things… and there’s a third one.

Casey: Is this guy drunk or a moron?
Dan: Like there’s no chance he could be both?

Dan: Y’know, sometimes it’s worth it, taking all the pies in the face, sometimes you come through it feeling good.
Casey: Yessss.
Dan: And how was your day?
Casey: Sometimes you just stand there, hip deep in pie.

More quotes at my other website. Sadly Sports Night is not available on Region 2, but you can import it on Region 1

2012
07/22
CATEGORY
Comedy
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Veep: Pilot Review

Armando Iannucci, writer of The Thick of It takes his foul mouthed political satirising to the US. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is the vice president, a pretty powerless position which is staffed by a correspondingly second rate selection of incompetents.

I’ve watched this pilot twice and I still can’t quite decide where I stand on it. Bits of it really made me laugh but bits of it made me cringe. I’m quite particular when it comes to comedy, fundamentally I like smart comedies – ones based on wit, eloquence and cleverness; most comedies however seem to be based on people either being stupid or messing up. Veep somehow manages to combine the two, the dialogue is smart, but the characters are so very stupid.

At one point the vice-president says “the level of incompetence in this office is staggering” and that’s the problem. The characters are not very good at their jobs, they make dumb mistakes and their personalities range from outright creepy through to just plain dull. The only likeable and competent character I saw seems to be the diary secretary and she only gets about 4 lines.

Maybe the biggest problem with the pilot was that I didn’t really ‘get’ the central character of the vice-president. I couldn’t work out whether she was someone actually competent in a terrible job and surrounded by morons, or whether she was just as simpering and short-sighted as everyone around her. She’s smart enough to realise her staff are dumb and have a shout about it, but not smart enough to get through an improvised speech without being offensive. Given that uncertainty in her character, Julia Louis-Dreyfus gives a surprisingly good performance with entertaining reactions and some funny physical comedy.

On the flip side, the dialogue is good; it’s snappy, witty and there are occasional flashes of the brilliance that made The Thick of It shine. I laughed out loud quite a few times and there were plenty of smiles for both the main dialogue and the little asides of characters in the background. The language isn’t quite as… um… colourful as The Thick of It’s, but it has its moments. The problem is that smart words coming out of the mouths of idiots just doesn’t really work. What the show misses is what made The Thick of It so good – the character of Malcolm Tucker and Peter Capaldi’s performance.

For me, comedy comes from looking just slightly sideways at real life. Comedies I love, like Outnumbered (at least the first couple of seasons) are really just day-to-day existence with a slightly better script writer and the chance to redraft things that don’t work the first time. Comedy that has to rely on improbably stupid characters or situations just doesn’t work so well for me. I know that the vice-president’s office is a big step down from the president’s office, but still, surely there are more competent people out there. Maybe I’m over-thinking things, if I laughed a lot then surely it’s a good comedy? So why do I just feel that I didn’t like it very much?

Veep is on Sky Atlantic on Monday nights.

Other reviews:
The Guardian – “The script is predictably sharp, fearless, unforgiving – sometimes so of us the audience; this is something you’ll want to watch again, to get nuances”
The Huffington Post – “‘Veep’ simply isn’t particularly fresh or funny, and most of its jokes are telegraphed from a long way away.”

2012
07/01
CATEGORY
11-12 Season
Comedy
Pilot Reviews
1 comment

The Big Bang Theory: Season 5

I don’t seem to have reviewed The Big Bang Theory on this website, so this review is going to have to do a bit of catching up before really getting to the review of the latest season.

I only started watching the show in the last year or so and was able to plough through it pretty quickly thanks to the wonders of dvd box sets and E4’s endless repeats. I quickly became charmed by the series and its collection of geeks. I’ll be honest, the characters, scenarios and conversations are pretty familiar to me. I studied physics at university and have shared houses, gaming days and a multitude of geeky discussions with people more than a little similar to these characters. That’s not to say that you need that background to appreciate the show, the fact that it’s one of the highest rated shows (8th) on US TV at the moment attests to that. I know plenty of people that like it who don’t have a science background, and at least one person with the same background as I that can’t stand it actually. But for me it really helps that the show’s writers clearly have a knowledge and respect for science geeks, meaning for the most part it stays respectful rather than mocking.

I say for the most part, because the show isn’t without its over the top moments and characters. Sheldon of course is the most extreme, he’s not utterly unbelievable, but he isn’t far off. In the early seasons it doesn’t really matter though, because by surrounding him with credible characters he is automatically more believable – Leonard and Penny are normal (for sitcom characters) and they think that Sheldon is odd but not imaginary so somehow it convinces me too. That doesn’t make much sense now I come to write it, but you know what I mean. It also makes the moments when Sheldon does something normal that much more lovely, the simple act of Sheldon hugging Penny as a thank you for a Christmas present brought tears to my eyes.

Unfortunately that balance is one of the things that gradually shifts over the seasons. Raj becomes an increasingly unlikely character and is mostly used as the butt of jokes, somehow actually becoming less socially aware as the years go on. The biggest problem however is Amy, who as a female Sheldon only draws attention to his weirdness; one of them is just about believable, two is too much. Fortunately the other new character, Bernadette, actually has a grounding effect on Howard (even if it’s never really clear what she sees in him) and forms a nice friendship with Penny.

Season 5 isn’t the best season of the series, I’m afraid my hatred of Amy (the character, the actress is actually very good) and growing frustration with Raj is just too much for me to get over, I cringe whenever they’re on screen. When they’re not about, the show is still a great deal of fun and there’s some very sweet relationships which it’s lovely to see evolving over time (Leonard and Penny’s on/off relationship, Howard and Bernadette’s engagement, Sheldon and Leonard’s friendship).

The fact that I generally don’t like American 1/2 hour comedies, the fact that I’ve got to season 5 of this one tells you a lot! There’s certainly a lot that they do very well, the actors are all superb and even the mediocre episodes still make me laugh out loud and it has a theme song by The Barenaked Ladies! I think if the over the top edges of Amy and Raj were sanded off, the show could easily return to the strengths of the early seasons, going back to being a charming and light look inside of the world of geeks that I remember.

2012
06/09
CATEGORY
11-12 Season
Comedy
1 comment

The Big C: Season 2

The Big C is a show that really does defy convention. Each episode is only half an hour long so I automatically tagged it as a comedy, and while it certainly has a good number of laughs in it, there was always far more going on than your average sitcom. A good sitcom will have a layer of humour over a layer of realistic life stuff, usually something work or relationship based. The Big C does that layer of humour and the day to day life layer, but then underneath that is a foundation of terminal cancer. It’s no easy thing to make all three of those levels work and interact, never losing sight of either the humour or the seriousness, but The Big C manages it admirably.

Season 1 was about Cathy herself dealing with her diagnosis, no one else knew and she focussed on trying to cram as much life as possible into her remaining time. But in season 2 everyone knows about her cancer and reacts in a different way, Cathy’s forced to deal with all those reactions rather than just focussing on herself. That in itself makes season 2 a lot less fun than the 1st, Cathy can no longer act selfishly, saying and doing absolutely anything she wants to do.

In my season 1 review I said “The show isn’t about death, it’s about life. It sounds very trite, but it is really, really true. Cathy has accepted her diagnosis and taken it as a kick in the arse to her seemingly unremarkable life”. This season however really is more about death, and the practicalities like how to pay for treatment and discrimination at work. To be honest, it’s vastly more depressing than the first season. There’s still plenty of humour from the dialogue and performances, but somehow the topic of fighting cancer and living day-to-day life is more depressing than just accepting a terminal diagnosis.

This refocusing somewhat unbalances the show. When it was more clearly a comedy it was easy to overlook the unrealistic elements such as the fact that all the characters around Cathy are ridiculously over-the-top caricatures, albeit very well acted ones, but the most useless bunch of people you’d ever meet. More frustrating is that Cathy’s cancer is one of those magic TV diseases that while extremely serious has no notable symptoms beyond those that can occasionally drive a plot. The prime example of that being the occasional hallucinations of dead people, a tried and tested cheat that is only forgiveable here because of the absolutely sublime way it plays out in the final episode of the season.

I saved the series up and watched the thirteen episodes over just a couple of weeks. By the end of the season I felt rather like I’d been hit by a truck. The last few episodes are intense and actually pretty devastating. They are also superbly put together and absolutely brilliant television. The fact that it’s difficult to understand whether it’s a comedy or a drama, that it bounces between surreal and brutal realism, actually is a positive. It’s a show that defies convention or label and that in itself makes it fascinating.

2012
04/28
CATEGORY
11-12 Season
Comedy
Drama
Families
1 comment

GCB: Pilot Review

Amanda was a ‘mean girl’ at school, but decades later she’s reformed. She is forced to return to Dallas and move in with her mother following her husband’s extremely public infidelity, embezzlement and eventual death. While Amanda has grown up and moved on, those she left behind really haven’t.

I wanted to hate this show, dismissing it as trashy rubbish. But like Desperate Housewives before it, ABC may have hit the sweet spot of creating something that is indeed, completely trashy, but also embarrassingly entertaining.

The show is based on a book which went by the much more informative and accurate title Good Christian Bitches (the show briefly went by Good Christian Belles before settling on the cryptically meaningless GCB). The girls that Amanda knew and terrorised in High School haven’t really moved on, they may be married with kids and careers but they still run in the high school gaggle and behave with the mean spirited immaturity that makes school so miserable.

All that bitchiness is accompanied by a devotion to the Church that’s slightly terrifying. Religion is always an element of American shows that I struggle to understand, it’s a part of their culture that I really have no common reference points with. But this show isn’t an in-depth cultural investigation, and religion is used here exclusively to show the hypocrisy of the characters. The comedy is just this side of silly, but only just this side. The majority of the characters are caricatures with plastic surgery, bible quotes, high heels, scandles, terrible fashions and harebrained schemes. You can tell they’re harebrained because there’s a comedy soundtrack to accompany it. Amanda and her kids feel a bit out of place because they’re they only ones that feel even vaguely normal human beings, the references to Amanda being a recovering alcoholic feel particularly out of place.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t laugh and find myself enjoying the pilot, largely thanks to the snappy and witty dialogue, but I felt rather like I’d just enjoyed a mountain of junk food – good, but lacking in substance. GCB isn’t pretending to be anything different, but it’s not really the kind of thing I’d make any kind of commitment to.

Other reviews
TV Addict – Has us willing to spend a little more time deep in the heart of Texas if for no other reason than creator Robert Harling knows a thing or two about escapist entertainment

CliqueClack – Amanda’s comment about her classmates, “Nobody can stay exactly like they were in high school” and Gigi’s response that they can sums up this series. This is an adult version of Mean Girls only not nearly as entertaining… so far.

TV Fanatic – The writers are of good pedigree and if they can keep up the pace they’ve set forth in the first episode, there will be nothing they can’t accomplish. Is it a worthy successor to Desperate Housewives? Absolutely. While Housewives surprised everyone by drawing itself as a comedy, I don’t think there will be any question as to where GCB fits in.

2012
03/20
CATEGORY
11-12 Season
Comedy
Pilot Reviews
2 comments
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