Tag Archives: Spring 2012 TV Season

Spring 2012 Review: NYC 22

20 Apr

The rookies in the 22

NYC 22 came in with one major factor going for it, and one major factor against it.  For it, is that it’s created by Richard Price, acclaimed crime novelist and writer on The Wire.  I read two of his novels, Clockers and Lush Life, and enjoyed both of them greatly, and working on The Wire, well that really goes without saying (He’s credited with the scripts for a couple of season 3 episodes, a couple of season 4s, and a season 5).  Against it, is the fact that, well, it’s on CBS.  CBS police procedurals are far from the worst shows on TV; there’s plenty of terrible CBS comedies to thank for that.  They’re generally watchable, but they’re hardly appointment viewing.  They’re more like second-tier hungover Sunday marathon viewing if Monk isn’t on any channel.  So the Richard Price who has written for  The Wire doesn’t seem exactly like an ideal fit for the short form of a CBS procedural.

And it’s not.  The show is a little bit clunky, and a little bit forced.  Still, the Price touch on the writing and storytelling does take it a step above a typical police procedural.  There’s plenty of cliche and standard police procedural rigmarole, but there’s less than in CSI or NCIS.  It’s not quite better enough to make it a really good show, sadly.  It feels boxed in; if the show could roam free to where it really wanted to go, there might really be something.

NYC 22 follows six NYPD rookies in the 22nd precinct up in Harlem.  The six rookies include – Jennifer Perry, a slim blonde who was an MP in Iraq, Kenny McLaren, a legacy cop who comes from generations of boys in blue, Ahmad Khan, a Afghani cop who migrated from the UK, Ray “Lazarus” Harper, a long-time beat reporter who decided to become a cop after being laid off, Tonya Sanchez, a Hispanic female cop whose family is composed of criminals, and Jayson “Jackpot” Terry an African-American who used to be a basketball hot shot before he blew out his knee.  The six, paired in twos, are mentored by Officer Daniel Deen, played by Oz’s Terry Kinner, who comes with the old wise man nickname of “Yoda.”  In just their first day on foot patrol, the officers have to deal with a variety of massive crises, learning on the job.

Lazarus and Sanchez are supposed to be watching a dead body to ensure no one interferes with it, but instead get held hostage by an irate ex-pharmaceutical employee who has been beating his wife since he got fired, and they have to talk him down.  The other four get caught up in a massive melee between teenage gangs, and have the temerity to not even radio in for help, slowing down the response of the rest of the police units.  At the end, classic, tough-guy-with-heart-of-gold Yoda gives all the officers a strict talking-to, explaining all the mistakes they made, and how they came extremely close to not even making it through day one, but when one the rookies asks how the new cops assigned to other officers did, Yoda responds, “worse.”  Awww.

It a review I posted about Scandal a couple of days ago, I talked about how people described The Wire, in the highest of compliments of being, “Not TV.”  After The Wire, the bar is set higher for police shows, and it’s hard to match that.  NYC 22 is certainly TV, but within the limits it’s trapped in, it does a halfway decent job.

Will I watch it again?  I might.  At first I was going to say to be honest, I probably wouldn’t, but writing that sentence I changed my mind.  I might.  It’s not great, and it probably will never be great, but it’s fairly decent, and I don’t think it will get worse.  Low expectations, I know, but I enjoyed it an all right amount.

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Spring 2012 Review: Don’t Trust the B in Apartment 23

19 Apr

Non-B and B

Perennial rom-com bitchy best friend Krysten Ritter plays the title bitch (assuming I’m correctly positing that “B” stands for “bitch”).  Ritter is also known for her recurring TV roles on Veronica Mars, Breaking Bad, as Jesse’s one-time girlfriend Jane, and her unforgettable role as Brad Garrett’s daughter on ‘Til Death.

One note before I get to the meat of the episode:  The episode uses the single most overused television episode storytelling gimmick, which is showing the end of the episode, chronologically, at the beginning, and then having the rest of the episode show us how we got there.  Just quickly thinking, there are enough examples that I should save this for an entire entry, but suffice it to say, that while I do think the gimmick can be used in a really interesting way, it’s usually merely used as a lazy storytelling device to develop cheap suspense or interest.  Moving on.

In this particular beginning, the roommate of the B in Apartment 23 opens the show by telling us that she found her roommate, said B, hooking up with her fiancé on her birthday cake, and that that was the best thing to ever to happen to her (whaaaaat?  but these are all horrible things – how could they be good?).  This woman, June, our narrator, is a nice, mild-mannered midwesterner come to big NYC with a life plan:  She’s got a job for some big corporation, which is providing her with housing, and soon her scientist fiancé will join her, and they’ll get married and make babies.  Only, when she gets to work, it turns out the Feds have raided the place, and well, work doesn’t exist anymore.  She’s thus, in one shot, out a job and an apartment.  After a montage of following roommate wanted ads to weird apartments and people, she finds a seemingly nice roommate in Ritter’s Chloe, who shows her around, seems normal and asks for a couple of months rent.  Chloe then confides her plan to act crazy/irritating enough to drive her new roomie out, while keeping her already paid rent money, to her best friend James Van Der Beek, playing a self-obsessed Entourage cameo-esque version of himself.

June fights back, however, when Chloe tries to screw her, and Chloe starts to actually, well, not hate her.  June’s fiance shows up, and Chloe learns that he’s been cheating on June, but still naive June refuses to believe it.  Thus, Chloe sees as her only option showing June in person that her boyfriend is a cheat by having June walk on herself with June’s boyfriend.  June walks in, is outraged, but then the truth comes out, and although she’s depressed, she thanks Chloe, and thinks maybe, well, she does have a friend in big NYC after all.

Wacky side character alert:  It’s a fairly wacky show, so we have a couple.  First, neighbor Eli, who creepily spies on the girls but also offers friendly advice from time to time.  Next, we have Robin, another creepy neighbor, this time a female who is obsessed with Chloe.  Third, less wacky than the other two, we have Mark, June’s old boss briefly at her corporate job, and her new boss at the coffee shop at which she now works.

I didn’t laugh a whole lot.  I like the idea, and I think Krysten Ritter is well cast in the role, and I could see where the show was going with some of the jokes and gags.  But it wasn’t really funny.  ABC comedies seem to have developed a reputation for mediocre first couple of episodes, with the potential to develop into something still inconsistent, yet, significantly better.  Suburgatory and Happy Endings are two shows that have followed this model, and Don’t Trust The B seems like it could certainly fall in here.  It’s an okay show, with the potential to be better, and with comedies it takes at least a few episodes to see if a show can deliver on that potential.  Very few comedies are hilarious or fantastic right out of the rate, so while not being funny certainly isn’t a compliment, it’s not a definitive judgment.

Will I watch it again?  Yes, I think I’m going to.  It’s certainly easier to watch half hour comedies than hour long dramas, and while it’s certainly not great right now, I’ll see if the writers can find their footing with some good building blocks to work with.

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Spring 2012 Review: Scandal

18 Apr

Sometimes when describing shows like The Wire, or maybe now a show like Girls, critics, or myself, may describe them as “real” or “not TV,” placing them in juxtaposition with typical television.  Rarely is something described as extremely TV, though I suppose it’s partly because TV is the default setting for a TV show.  Scandal, for better or worse, is extremely TV.

While I’d argue, if I had to make a general rule, “not TV” is better than “TV”, if only because it’s more interesting because TV has been done a thousand more times, TV is by no means necessarily bad.  TV has positive attributes, and within TV, there’s a wide range of quality.  That said, because of the repetition, it’s a lot harder to stand out in “TV” than in “not TV.”   Scandal’s not bad.  But maybe it’s just that watching so much really good TV makes it hard for me to take something so TV seriously without some humor or irony, intentional or unintentional.  I think on some level, NCISs and CSIs, certainly CSI:Miami, at least are semi-self aware of their nature and all the easy ways to make fun of their techno speak and one liners, at least implicitly.  Maybe not, but, although I don’t watch those shows very often, I can enjoy the tropes and viewer humor on a level if I do.  Scandal is just so over the top and fully serious it’s making it difficult.  I usually develop an appreciation for over the top tropes, such as in rom coms, but it’s just not happening here.

Kerry Washington plays Olivia Pope, former White House employee, and current head of Olivia Pope and Associates.  What does Olivia Pope and Associates do, you ask?  Well, they’re lawyers, but they don’t practice law.  They SOLVE PROBLEMS.  They FIX CRISES.  Insert similar euphemism here.  Pope leads a team of dedicated associates who follow her lead and believe in her with all their hearts; they don’t always agree, but they trust her decision making.  Among her team are Stephen (played by Henry Ian Cusick – best know as Desmond from Lost), who requires a pep talk from Olivia convincing him to get engaged, Abby, Harrison, and Huck, the resident techie.  Introduced in the first scene is new hire Quinn, who goes to a bar thinking she’s been set up on a blind date, only to find out upon talking to Harrison that she’s been hired by Pope.  At Pope & Associates, they’re “gladiators in suits.”

Olivia Pope is a living legend.  She’s the best and whatever it is she does, the force for ULTIMATE GOOD and Quinn is literally (maybe not literally) foaming at the mouth to start working for her.  After she’s hired, Quinn and Harrison go back to the office, where the Quinn, the new girl, who only knows of the legend of Olivia Pope, learns how her new firm really works. She’s tutored by Harrison, who gives her constant guidance about Olivia, such as “Never say I don’t know.  Olivia doesn’t believe in I don’t know.”  Well, then.  That solves that.

The firm’s primary case in this episode (they’re not lawyers though, they remind us – so maybe case isn’t the right word) is the defense (but not legal defense) of a Iraq (might have been Afghanistan – don’t quote me) war hero who is now a big time conservative republican speaker, who found his fiancée dead, and knows he’ll be accused of the murder.  The team goes on an interview montage to see whether they should take the non-legal case and although three of the four votes go against taking it, like the old Abraham Lincoln story (I can’t find a good link in two minutes – but google “the ayes have it Lincoln”), Pope’s vote for it takes the day.  Her gut tells her the marine didn’t do it, and her gut is ALWAYS RIGHT.  Remember that!

Olivia is so badass! Within the first fifteen minutes of the show, she tells a presidential aide, that the PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES had damn well better make time for her if he wants her services.  He does, though, and he wants her to shut down a woman who claims that she slept with the Prez.  She worked for the president before, and she trusts her gut, so she’ll do it, but we get a little Kerry Washington twinge indicating HER GUT MAY REALLY BE BE TELLING HER HE’S LYING.

Olivia fixes cases, of course, as we’ve seen.  But she doesn’t just fix cases.  Oliva fixes PEOPLE.  So says Huck (Guillermo Diaz from Half Baked; apparently she fixes careers as well (way harsh; Diaz has had a perfectly respectable career, including recently the bizarre “I Wanna Go” Britney Spears video)).  Of course, the only one Olivia can’t fix is herself.  She doesn’t date she tells us, but that’s kind of a lie.  We’ll get to this in the first episode spoiler section upcoming.

Just when it seems like every shred of evidence is against their GOP marine, it turns out a a camera captured him and his (FIRST EPISODE SPOILER) GAY LOVER on tape.  At first, he’d rather go down with the ship than admit his homosexuality; he’s supposed to be a hero after all.  However, Pope uses LIFE EXPERIENCE to convince him to let the tape exonerate him from spending at least 20 years in jail.  “She’s not one of the good guys.  She’s the best guy.”  is the last line of wisdom mentor Harrison tells the rookie Quinn.  Olivia is THE BEST GUY.

I’m sorry.  I don’t know where along my years of growing up I lost an ability to take anything seriously, but I certainly can’t take this seriously.  I’m probably not entirely supposed to, and honestly, if you ask me what the real difference is between this and Leverage or any of any number of other shows, I don’t really have a good reason.  Maybe I’m just not watching it in the right mood.

First episode spoiler #2:  SHE HAD AN AFFAIR IN THE PRESIDENT!  THIS IS IN THE FIRST EPISODE.  That’s it.  I’ve changed my mind.  If you’re going to go in, at least go all the fuck in.  You do your thing, Olivia Pope.  You can FIX everyone and everything but you can’t fix yourself.  I take back everything I said earlier in this review.  This show is wonderful.  THE PRESIDENT LIED TO HER AND NOW SHE IS OUT TO GET THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.  MORE PLEASE.

Will I watch it again?  Yeah, it’s probably not going to happen.  Though, writing this was fun.  Maybe I’ll recap the show.  Also, Desmond’s in it.  That might be enough.

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Spring 2012 Review: Best Friends Forever

17 Apr

So I’m going to belatedly review a bunch of shows that if they’re still on the air, won’t be for very long, and which most of you will never watch.  If a show airs and no one watches it, was it ever on?  Still, somebody must do the thankless jobs; attention must be paid and all that.

The titular best friends are Jessica Black (played by Jessica St. Clair) and Lennon White (Lennon Parham).  Jessica is talking to Lennon via video chat as the show opens, Jessica in San Francisco, where she is awaiting the return of her husband, with whom she has apparently been having problems, and Lennon in New York.  When, instead of her husband, divorce papers show up, she’s so despondent that she hops on a plane to New York and visits Lennon, who attempts to comfort her as she slips back into her old pre-marriage New York routine (apparently they lived in what is now Lennon’s apartment together).  But, wait, there’s a problem!  Getting in the way of the best friend Steel Magnolia viewing sessions is Lennon’s new-ish live-in boyfriend, Joe, who feels like he’s getting the squeeze now that Jessica has come to stay.  He doesn’t like the way they want to spoil his chili Sundays, or move his blow up Michigan chair.  Jessica doesn’t trust Joe either; upon the hilarious miscommunication plot device of finding a ring and thinking Joe is going to propose, she innately suspects that Joe is not up to the caliber of man Lennon deserves, and makes it her mission to ensure Lennon won’t be marrying this guy she simply doesn’t know enough about.

Luckily for the BFFs, crisis is averted when it turns out that the ring is not an engagement ring at all, but rather a super-sweet memento of Lennon and Joe’s first date at Medieval times, which Joe bought to remember the occasion.  Jessica realizes Joe makes Lennon very happy, and that he’s a legit good guy, while Joe realizes that he needs to make room in his life for Jessica, since Jessica is so important to Lennon, and there’s a big hug at the end (I am absolutely not lying about the hug).

Oh, and in town is also a mutual friend of the crew’s named Rav, who Jessica seems to have maybe a romantic past with, which she seemingly ended.  Rebound, anyone?

Wacky side character alert (I’m tempted to add this to my reviews from now on as a regular feature):  The fifth main cast member is precoicious African-American 9-year old Queenetta, a neighbor who constantly hangs outside their building and apparently verbally spars with the two women.  In the pilot, she criticizes Jessica’s choices of dress, particularly her khaki pants.

It’s not a terrible sitcom.  We’re not in Whitney, or Last Man Standing, or 2 Broke Girls, or Are You There Chelsea territory, by any means.  It’s merely the more common brand of forgettable sitcom.  I hold no animus towards any of these characters, and they seem like perfectly nice people on the whole, but nor was there a whole lot to make me sad when this show inevitably dies off after five episodes of a terrible NBC time slot (trick question! All NBC time slots are terrible!).  It’s worthy of a big ol’ meh.

Will I watch it again?  I’m not going to.  If watching it again would help get Whitney or Are You There Chelsea get cancelled, I would watch it 18 more times, but as it is, there’s just miles and miles of sitcoms to go before I sleep, and mediocrity, while not terrible, but without a spark of promise that it will develop into something really good, isn’t worth spending time on.

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Spring 2012 Review: Rob

10 Feb

 

I’m still a bit confused about the actual title of this show, and how many !s should be in it, and where they should be placed.  So let’s just accept that I’m talking about the new Rob Schneider sitcom, in which he impulsively marries a Mexican woman, and boy does he not realize, that’s he’s married to her family also!  Where Work It indulged heartily in stereotypes about women, Rob digs in to Mexican stereotypes.

Disclaimer:  After writing the Work It review and this one, I do want to say, it’s not that the use of stereotypes can absolutely never ever be funny.  It’s just that it’s usually not funny, and is usually terrible and offensive.  I just want to leave that door open for the few who trade in this general type of humor more effectively, a la Chapelle’s Show.  Stil, for ever Chapelle’s Show that does it well, there’s ten Mind of Mencias that do it terribly.

Either way, I would like to focus in on how bad Rob is as a television program.

Basically, Rob meets his wife, Maggie’s family, and while needing to impress them, constantly embarrasses himself (think Meet the Parents but with a stereotypical Mexican component).  Rob was as difficult to watch as Work It, but for a very different reason.  Rob basically contained the this-man-can’t-do-anything-right type of pratfalls, as he stumbled through physical comedy bits embarrassing himself, but without any of the actual laughter which comes from when this type of humor actually works.  You get the hard to watch part without the funny.

Rob takes on hard hitting issues like illegal immigration, mentioning to Cheech Marin, who plays his wife’s father, that he feels that the borders should be open, while Marin responds that he wants a wall to be erected so he doesn’t have any competition.  Rob mentions he’s a landscape architect to his wife’s mother, who labels him a gardener.  I love that they think they’re turning stereotypes on their head, for example by showing us that these Mexicans are successful – father Cheech Marin says he owns several car washes, contrary to what us stupid Americans, who have low expectations for Mexican=-Americans, think.

There’s a lot of low brow, physical comedy.  It’s not that I think all low brow comedy is unfunny, but there’s caught-in-a-situation-where-someone-mistakes-you-as-masturbating joke, and there’s a caught-in-a-situation-where-someone-mistakes-you-as-masturbating joke.  Party Down manages to pull it off when goofy boss Ron gets caught trying to use a stain pen on his pants, but Rob not so much when his wife’s grandmother catches him trying to put out of the fire that has erupted on his pants when accidentally knocks over his wife’s grandmother’s devotional candles to her dead husband.  Rob even follows it with an extremely creepy and terrible joke and he ends up in an awkward sexual position vis a vis the grandmother, after trying to cover her mouth to prevent her from screaming out what a mess he’s made setting the room on fire.

What’s really sad is that there is a dearth of Latin American actors on television, and likeSt. Louisdeserves better than Work It, Latin American actors and actresses deserve better than Rob.

Will I watch it again?  No.  Sadly, while Work It was quickly cancelled, this is on CBS, so people watch it.  I look forward to never having to think about this program again, except in the litany of terrible projects Rob Schneider has been associated with.  It’s amazing how the man, in a town where so many talented comedians never get a chance, manages to continue to get a work, and get a project where he gets to have an attractive, much younger wife.

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Spring 2012 Preview and Predictions: Cable (besides HBO)

6 Jan

(In order to meld the spirit of futile sports predictions with the high stakes world of the who-will-be-cancelled-first fall (now spring!) television season, I’ve set up a very simple system of predictions for how long new shows will last.  Each day, I’ll (I’m aware I switched between we and I) lay out a network’s new shows scheduled to debut in the fall (reality shows not included – I’m already going to fail miserably on scripted shows, I don’t need to tackle a whole other animal) with my prediction of which of three categories it will fall into.

These categories are:

1.  Renewal – show gets renewed

2.  13+ – the show gets thirteen or more episodes, but not renewed

3.  12- – the show is cancelled before 13

Spring note:  It’s a lot harder to analyze midseason shows as there’s no collective marketing campaigns going on at one time, as many of the shows start dates are spread (or are even unannounced for some)  Still, we’ll take partially educated guesses.  Also, they’re a lot less likely to get partial pick ups, so maybe that trade off will make it easier)

All other cable networks here.  USA and TNT are holding their new shows until the summer, so we’ve got entrants from BBC America, FX, Showtime, Starz and MTV.

BBC America

The Fades

The Fades has already aired in Britain but will be making its American debut this spring.  From a writer of Skins, The Fades is a supernatural show which revolves around the central concept that spirits of dead people who couldn’t get into heaven are all around us, known here as the titular Fades.  The main character Paul is a teenager who has apocalyptic dreams and the ability to see these Fades, an ability shared only by a select few, known as Angelics.  The Fades are bitter, and have slowly made progress in their attempt to have an impact in the real world, leading to a possible battle with the Angelics which Paul will be in the middle of.

Verdict:  Renewal – I shouldn’t really even have this category for imported shows – British shows generally air short runs anyway per season, six in this case, and it’s already aired months ago.  That said, there’s no official word, but as it’s been popular and well-reviewed across the pond this is just the smart money.

FX

Unsupervised – 1/19

Unsupervised is an animated series co-created by David Hornsby, best known as recurring character Rickety Cricket on FX hit It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  He also created and starred in the quickly cancelled How To Be A Gentlemen last fall on CBS.  Hornsby and Justin Long voice the main two characters, 15-year old best friends.  Kristen Bell, Romany Malco, Fred Armison, and Kaitlin Olson also have roles.

Verdict:  12- David Hornsby did not impress me with How To Be A Gentlemen, though FX has had a lot more success with quality comedies than CBS.  FX has a pretty good record overall, and there’s a clearly illustrious voice cast.  I’m really not sure why I’m skeptical, and hopefully it will be good, but it looks bad to me from the poster and I’m semi-arbitrarily voting against.

Showtime

House of Lies – 1/8

House of Lies is a comedy about the hilarious world of management consulting, starring Don Cheadle, Kristen Bell, and Ben Schwartz, best known as Parks and Recreation’s Jean-Ralphio.  Honestly, the first time I heard about this show, about management consultants working for clients around the world and doing whatever needs to be done to get the project finished and make money, I thought for sure it was a high intensity drama, especially since it was starring Don Cheadle, who is not exactly known for his comedic roles.  The fact that it’s a comedy floored me initially.

Verdict:  Renewal – don’t really know what to think, but Showtime, like HBO, which it desperately wants to be, likes to give shows second seasons if they do anything at all.

Starz

Spartacus: Vengeance – 1/27

This is kind of misleading.  I have no idea how to consider Starz’ continuing line up of Spartacus shows.  My normal inclination would just be to consider them different seasons of the same show, but Starz doesn’t exactly consider them that, and tragically the actor who played Spartacus died, so maybe that’s a factor.  Because Starz seems to, I’m going to treat it as a new show, though it’s clearly not.  A new actor takes on the Spartacus role and it’s filled with all the sex and violence that the Spartacus name has come to represent.

Verdict:  12- More cheating – so far each Spartacus has been treated as its own series, so it seems likely that if there’s another Spartacus, which there well may be, it will probably have a new name and thus be considered a new series.  I don’t really understand it, either.

MTV

I Just Want My Pants Back – 2/2

It’s about a twenty-something trying to figure out life, love, sex and work.  Could it possibly sound more generic?  The minor gimmick which gives the show its title is that the main character’s pants are stolen after a one-night stand and the character looks all over the city to find the pants and the girl who took them.  I’m guessing it won’t be good based on the fact that I don’t give a ton of credence to MTV original programming (I’m already too old to be the target audience, really) and most shows that sound like this are probably bad (even though the set up is so generic it could be any level of quality).

Verdict:  12- I have no idea what it takes for MTV to continue original series.  I must admit I’m mostly unfamiliar with MTV original series and don’t really have a beat on who watches them or what it would take to continue them.  This is nothing more than a guess in the dark.

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Spring 2012 Preview and Predictions: HBO

5 Jan

(In order to meld the spirit of futile sports predictions with the high stakes world of the who-will-be-cancelled-first fall (now spring!) television season, I’ve set up a very simple system of predictions for how long new shows will last.  Each day, I’ll (I’m aware I switched between we and I) lay out a network’s new shows scheduled to debut in the fall (reality shows not included – I’m already going to fail miserably on scripted shows, I don’t need to tackle a whole other animal) with my prediction of which of three categories it will fall into.

These categories are:

1.  Renewal – show gets renewed

2.  13+ – the show gets thirteen or more episodes, but not renewed

3.  12- – the show is cancelled before 13

Spring note:  It’s a lot harder to analyze midseason shows as there’s no collective marketing campaigns going on at one time, as many of the shows start dates are spread (or are even unannounced for some)  Still, we’ll take partially educated guesses.  Also, they’re a lot less likely to get partial pick ups, so maybe that trade off will make it easier)

HBO will get its own edition this season.  HBO debuted only one show in the fall, but has five coming out at different points over the spring, one drama, and four comedies, two which are co-produced with foreign networks.

Luck – 1/29

 

Big guns are on board for this show.  It’s created by HBO regular David Milch, who was behind the three season Deadwood, and co-created one season failure John from Cincinnati.  He also co-created NYPD Blue almost twenty years ago.  Michael Mann directed the first episode.  Luck is about the niche world of horse racing and stars Dustin Hoffman as degenerate gambler Chester“Ace” Bernstein.  Dennis Farina, Nick Nolte, Jill Hennessey and Michael Gambon also star.

Verdict:  Renewal – I really hope it’s good.  I haven’t watched all of Deadwood, but I’ve liked what I’ve seen, and while a show about such a strange insular world sounds risky it also sounds interesting.

Life’s Too Short

Life’s Too Short is a show written and directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant and created by the two of them and famous dwarf actor Warwick Davis, star of Willow and Ewok Wicket from Return of the Jedi.  The show is a mockumentary, following an exaggerated version of Warwick Davis playing himself, as a dwarf who acts and runs a talent agency for small people.  Merchant and Gervais also appear as themselves.  A camera crew follows Davis around, promising classic Gervais and Merchant awkward comedy.

Verdict:  Renewal – cheating!  It’s a co-production with the BBC, where it aired this fall and it’s already been renewed for a second season airing in 2013.

Girls – sometime in April

I have an extremely limited amount of information about this series at my disposal.  Girls will be executively produced by Judd Apatow and is created by 25 year old Lena Durham who apparently made minor waves with film Tiny Furniture in 2010.  It’s about four girls in their twenties, and I read it billed, on one site, as the anti-Sex and the City.  Not in the constantly talking about sex way, as there’ll be lots of that.  More in the, instead of eating at fancy restaurants and buying expensive purses, they’ll be near broke.

Verdict: 12-  Honestly, I have no fucking clue.  HBO shows are far more likely to get second seasons than broadcast shows, but something’s got to get cancelled.

Angry Boys – 1/1

Co-produced by HBO and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Angry Boys is another mockumentary series, this time created by mockumentary veteran Australian Chris Lillies who has produced two mockumentary series before this one.  Lillies himself plays most of the important characters, including an American rapper (is blackface cool by now?), a champion surfer, a guard at a juvenile prison, and a Japanese mother.

Verdict:  Renewal – another cheat!  This was released in Australia nearly a year ago and is very popular there.  I can’t find anything about renewal, but unless they don’t want to continue or it’s a lot more expensive to film than it seems to be, international popularity may keep it afloat regardless of how it does in the US of A.

Veep – unscheduled

To refill their comedy stock after the comedy mass execution of ’11, HBO is throwing out a few options this spring.  In Veep, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss plays the Vice President of the US and it turns out the job isn’t quite as glamorous as it sounds.  Louis-Dreyfuss struggles with the day to day monotony of a post without much power.  Tony Hale (Buster of Arrested Development) and Anna Chlumsky (the titular girl in My Girl) co-star.

Verdict:  Renewal – Louis-Dreyfuss is talented enough and HBO will probably give her a better vehicle here than The New Adventures of Old Christine.  Plus, HBO needs the comedies.

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