Most British TV shows suck

Most British TV shows suck.  This shouldn’t be a revelation.  Not everything can be Monty Python or The Office.  Most American television sucks, too, but I think that’s easier to realize for American viewers like me.  We generally don’t see most terrible foreign shows; the ones we get have been vetted by the local critics and audiences.  Because of this, I think greater leeway is given to foreign shows from critics.  Stuff like Dr. Who and The Black Adder are respected critically and have sizable fan bases, though the former is at best campy with Sci-Fi Channel made-for-tv-level special effects and the latter is, well, not funny (or maybe it used to be and hasn’t held up in the slightest).

This is closer to the state of British television than I'm comfortable with.

In this biased, prejudiced mindset, I set out to see a few episodes of a couple shows I knew I wouldn’t like: The IT Crowd and Coupling.  I went into The IT Crowd expecting The Big Bang Theory, the biggest television abomination.*  It wasn’t that bad.  Now, it was still bad, just not eye-stabbingly terrible.  Richard Ayoade is decent, but his intentionally bad presentation isn’t nearly as effective here as in the fun romp that is Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.

I must concede that it does have a pretty slick title sequence.  However, most everything else about the show is bad, standard sitcom fair.  It’s close to When the Whistle Blows, the show within a show from Extras.  With all of the geeky tech stuff around, you can tell it’s written by passionate geeks.  Unfortunately, they are passionate geeks with terrible taste in television.

*The Big Bang Theory offends me not so much as a geek, but as a television viewer.  Really, CBS’s entire Monday night lineup is an affront to humanity. How I Met Your Mother, Rules of Engagement (I haven’t seen it, but it’s at an impressively terrible “28″ on Metacritic), Two and Half Men, The Big Bang Theory, CSI: Miami – that is an All-Star team of terrible television.  My god.  CBS in general has terrible programming though.  The only thing I ever watch from CBS are AFC football games.  That is it.  I can’t say enough about how bad CBS’s programming is.

Coupling seems to be a sexed-up version of Friends.  The jokes are juvenile (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and predictable with storylines and hijinks that were stale fifteen years ago.  The laugh track is horribly out of place, as it always is in single-camera sitcoms.  The inappropriateness is somewhere in between The Flintstones and the first season of Sports Night.

Also, I’d like to point out that my suggestion for Aaron Sorkin’s next show wasn’t too far off from this.

Arbitrary song of the day: Shout Out Louds – Impossible (Possible Version by Studio)

Sit Down, Shut Up pilot

This past Sunday, Fox premiered its new animated series Sit Down, Shut Shut Up.  Born in Australia and reinterpreted through Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz, the series has arrived with little fanfare but a quality timeslot.  I’m not sure if Fox is trying to kill it yet or not.

Sit Down, Shut Up is surprisingly visually striking, utilizing animation over top of set photographs.  It’s really interesting, but not distracting.  This type of animation gives the frames greater detail with little additional effort (I assume we can expect to see the same backdrops reused).  There are little jokes caught in the background, such as what teachers should if a student is choking (hint: drag him off school grounds).

The cast is extremely overqualified.  We have Arrested Development alums Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Henry Winkler along with current/former SNL members Will Forte, Cheri Oteri, and Kenan Thompson* as well as voice acting mainstay Tom Kenny**.  The characters are cast as you would expect them: Jason Bateman plays a nice guy who is in love with someone but can’t tell her, Will Arnett plays an over-the-top obnoxious jock, Henry Winkler a sad-sack teacher with a penchant for pornography, and Kenan Thompson is a large black woman.

Character design was done by Mo Willems, who did the character design for Sheep in the Big City, a short-lived but favorite cartoon of mine.  Like Sheep, Sit Down delivers plenty of fourth wall-breaking laughs and clever quips.  This show doesn’t have infinite potential, but I think it’ll be solid.  I’m really hoping this series is given a fair chance by Fox, but unfortunately, I wouldn’t surprised if it ends up with only a Clone High-like run.

*I love that Kenan Thompson started on All That in the Good Burger sketches and ended up on SNL.  I feel kind of bad for Kel though.

**That Tom Kenny and Jill Talley are the couple in the “Tonight, Tonight” video is one my favorite bits of Smashing Pumpkins trivia.

Arbitrary song of the day: Hot Chip – Ready for the Floor

The best 18 Adult Swim shows – Part 5: 6-4

This is taking me many months apparently…

6. Home Movies

From the people who brought you Dr. Katz, you’ve got Home Movies.  It features a lot of the improvisational feeling of the Dr. Katz segments with H. Jon Benjamin and Jonathan Katz. The main character, Brendon, is a kid movie director partially based on the actor who plays him, Brendon Small (who also co-created the series). Like Dr. Katz, it uses the techniques of retroscripting and, originally at least, Squigglevision. After the first season, they switched over to normal animation techniques (Adobe Flash I believe), which was just fine with me. Squigglevision is freaky…

Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Laaaaaaaaw

5. Robot Chicken

Robot Chicken is probably the most popular original Adult Swim program. The sheer number of celebrities who have appeared on Robot Chicken is staggering, especially for a semi-obscure cable show shown after midnight. The Star Wars episode is must-see and includes what is probably my favorite Robot Chicken sketch, which features Emperor Palpatine speaking to Darth Vader over the phone after the Battle of Yavin. I think everyone who has watched Robot Chicken since the beginning felt a little pride when the show was given a shout-out on Family Guy’s Star Wars special.

4. Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law

There’s so much to love about this series, whether it is the poking fun at Hanna-Barbera characters, over-the-top theme song, or Stephen Colbert as insane, eye-patch wearing boss Phil Ken Sebben. Despite all the bizarre sight gags and non sequiturs, the most strange thing about the series may be that there was a video game based on the show for the Wii.

Top 5 SNL Digital Shorts

I love the SNL Digital Shorts.  The Lonely Island, which consists of Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, and Andy Samberg are largely responsible for these pre-recorded and edited SNL segments.  Anyway, the following is a list of my five favorite Shorts (you can see a full list here):

5. Iran So Far – Andy Samberg composes a Valentine to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  Accompanied by Adam Levine of Maroon 5, Samberg croons clever rhymes to Ahmadinejad, who is portrayed well by Fred Armisen.  There are just some fantastic lines (“You can deny the Holocaust all you want; but you can’t deny there’s something between us”) and the Jake Gyllenhaal cameo is nice.  The fact that the song is based on Aphex Twin’s Avril 14th is most quite surreal.

4. People Getting Punched Right Before Eating – Really, the entire description is right there in the segment name.  It’s Samberg’s timing and the over-the-top music that make this so great.  Plus, the non-sequitur-tastic ending is great in itself.  The timing and music of this short are almost exactly the same as Andy Popping into Frame, but better.

3. Lazy Sunday – Oh, man, the top three are all real close, but at #3 is the Digital Short that set the gold standard.  Part Beastie Boys and part mc chris, Samberg and Chris Parnell rap about going to see The Chronicles of Narnia.  Some great lines are here, including the classic “Mr.Pibb and Red Vines equals crazy delicious!” and one of my faves: “You can call us Aaron Burr by the way we’re dropping Hamiltons”.  It also makes me want cupcakes.

2. Jizz in My Pants – This short probably has the slickest production of any yet.  Featuring the first single off of The Lonely Island’s first album, this video plays it straight at first, looking and sounding like some British dance hit.  The way Samberg and Taccone are dressed, their faux-serious poses and British accents, overly dramatic video direction, and a choice cameo by Justin Timberlake come together (ha! get it?) to make this the best short since my #1 choice of…

1. Extreme Challenge – From the no-dialogue vein of People Getting Punched…, Extreme Challenge matches Andy Samberg and Kristen Wiig in a series of increasingly absurd challenges.  I don’t feel like a description can do this justice, so just watch it!

Honorable mentions: Andy’s Dad, Business Meeting, Natalie Raps (I really wanted this one to make the list)

Arbitrary song of the day: The Kinks – This Time Tomorrow

The best 18 Adult Swim shows – Part 4: 9-7

Booyah, numbers nine through seven today!

9.  Frisky Dingo

Frisky Dingo is a great example of Adult Swim’s great formula of putting dumb people in serious situations which they don’t treat as serious situations.  It works pretty well here as Killface expounds on why his postcards of ill intent have the word doom on them in quotation marks (“Is this some sort of ironic doom?”).  It has a spin-off now called The Xtacles, which I expect to be pretty good, as Xander Crews’ personal task force was always one of the funnier bits.

8.  Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil

Lucy is a great series from Loren Bouchard of Dr. Katz and Home Movies fame.  As a result, the always hilarious H. Jon Benjamin is cast as The Devil.  It instantly makes me happy whenever I recognize his voice in a cartoon.  Lucy uses a strange animation style which kind of looks likes living Playmobil, but its effective enough to get the point across as The Devil concocts ridiculous schemes to take over the world.

7.  Space Ghost Coast to Coast

The earliest Adult Swim and the one that set the benchmark for adult programming on Cartoon Network, Space Ghost was surreally clever.  The sheer number of stars who were guests on it is amazing, considering the show’s very unusual nature.  My favorite episode is absolutely “Knifin’ Around”, which features Björk and Thom Yorke.  Björk is introduced as Space Ghost’s wife and hilarity ensues (“Honey, those aren’t children, they’re packets of cream cheese”).

Arbitrary song of the day: Born Ruffians – I Need a Life (Four Tet Remix)

The best 18 Adult Swim shows – Part 3: 12-10

12. The Brak Show

The Brak Show, a spin-off of Space Ghost Coast to Coast, put Brak and his spiteful pal Zorak into the trusty sitcom.  While originally villains of Space Ghost, they had been recast as talk show sidekicks and are re-recast here as adolescents.  Most of the show is merely OK, but the standout material is that from Brak’s father – appropriately named “Father”.  A tiny Desi Arnaz figure voiced by George Lowe (the voice of Space Ghost), his self-centeredness and non-sequiturs are what made the series as funny as it was.

11.  Stroker and Hoop

Stroker and Hoop was a very short series – 13 episodes to be precise.  Most of the humor was created from the absurd plots that Stroker (Adult Swim regular Jon Glaser) and Hoop were investigating.  My favorite plot that I can recall is a client who needs help getting a telepathic Ron Howard out of his brain.  Most things are better with Ron Howard.

10.  Metalocalypse

Heavy metal and ultra-violence.  Imagine The Neptunes, except instead of inoffensive aquatic pop music, it’s brutal death metal – this is Dethklok.  Well, not really.  Thousands of times more popular than any band in history, the five members of Dethklok are more powerful than any government, giving them the ability to destroy, brutalize, and generally do whatever they want in the name of metal.  The humor is twofold.  The first aspect is the absurd lengths to which Dethklok goes to in order to achieve their brand of metal and just how extremely “metal” everything they own is.  The second is the Adult Swim stalwart of comedy: putting normal conversations into abnormal situations.  In this case, normal conversations are inserted into this world of heavy metal and ultra-violence.  Throw in the show’s bizarre mythology and you’ve got some quality viewing.

The cast of Metalocalypse is also pretty interesting.  Among the regular cast, we have series creators Brendon Small and Tommy Blacha along with Mark Hamill and Malcolm McDowell, which is pretty cool.  There’s also been a slew of musicians as guest stars, including Mike Patton (Faith No More, Mr. Bungle),  members of Metallica, and a laundry list of metal acts.

Arbitrary song of the day: Gnarls Barkley – Open Book

The best 18 Adult Swim shows – Part 2: 15-13

Oh, man, so we are totally continuing with these. Onwards!

15. Fat Guy Stuck in Internet

Fat Guy Stuck in Internet (or FGSiI to people who like abbreviations way more than they should) has the same type of high budget school-play type of feel to it as Saul of the Molemen. As of writing, the show is only one season of ten episodes and I’m not entirely sure if it’s finished or if the creators plan on continuing it. Knowing the way Adult Swim operates, even if there were going to be new episodes, it wouldn’t be for a couple years. Anyways, I feel like this series missed out on a lot of easy (but still funny) jokes. There were so many directions to take this. They could have taken the people-acting-like-internet-personas route, the personified websites direction, or even just have made it a slew of nerd-references or video game jokes. Instead, it’s simply a buddy/adventure comedy, which doesn’t truly take advantage of the fact that the show is supposed to occur inside in the internet. One key difference between Fat Guy and Saul of the Molemen is the way Fat Guy is much more episodic, which makes missing a couple a lot less confusing. This is a plus for a show that you can’t get excited enough about to make it must-see every week. It’s worth pointing out that the ninth episode is a Labyrinth parody, which can’t help but be entertaining.

14. Moral Orel

Moral Orel is not a subtle show. The satire of conservative Christian culture is generally amusing, but despite the extreme mismatch between Orel’s innocent perceptions and the actual occurrences, the show was never as funny as it seemed it should have been. It wasn’t a bad premise for a show, but I think the overly satiric style prevented any particular creativity, especially for dialog and the voice actors. You have this caricatured universe – and that’s the joke. There isn’t that much else you can do with it. Orel’s misadventures are entertaining, but again, it feels like it could be better. I just don’t know how.

13. The Boondocks

Anyway, this TV series is more or less a translation from the subversive (but formerly widely published) comic strip of the same name by Aaron McGruder. I say “more or less” because there are a few ingredients that seem to be missing from the TV series. One of the frequent devices used in the comic strip is Huey writing emails to celebrities, politicians, or other figures in pop culture. His letters to conservative political figures are what made the strip so entertaining and relevant. The series, however, deals more with characters and plot rather than culture commentary. However, there are certainly some hilarious bits. Samuel L. Jackson voices a gangster-wannabe who is the son of a wealthy white bank-owner. After some mishaps in robbing a bank lead to it taking almost half an hour, he comments in the way that only Samuel L. Jackon can, “It takes us a whole episode of fucking Seinfeld to rob a bank!”

The best episode, in both comedic value and insight, is absolutely “Return of the King” in which Martin Luther King, Jr. wakes up from a coma in the present. The episode poignantly contrasts the ideology of the United States civil rights movement of the 1960s with both the media-intensive political culture and current black popular culture. While most of the episode is a critique of modern black culture, the most fascinating aspects of the episode to me was the portrayal of the disparity between the philosophy of King and the ideological leanings of social conservatives, who would never for a second say that their philosophies are incompatible with King’s despite the glaring disunity. I’ve never understood that – could you imagine King making a speech that included the following, “Love your fellow man! Oh, except for the gays.” It’s easy to tolerate the people you like… Anyway, back to the subject at hand… “Return of the King” is a fantastically insightful and funny episode that captures the spirit of the comic strip and McGruder’s message. I’d recommend it even to those who otherwise have little interest in the show.

The Boondocks takes many of its stylistic cues from the Shinichirō Watanabe animes Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, which were themselves heavily influenced by American culture. Samurai Champloo specifically draws from hip hop culture, making the circle of influence complete. The Boondocks is currently in one of those patented Adult Swim hiatuses where no one seems to know if the series is continuing or if it was unofficially canceled. Seriously, what goes on down there at [AS] headquarters? How does it take them years to go from pilot to second episode? Why is a 1.5 year hiatus normal practice for [AS] shows?

Arbitrary song of the day: Ladytron – Playgirl

The best 18 Adult Swim shows – Part 1: 18-16

I like lists. I feel I should be writing more lists. The following is the first part of a six part series on my favorite [adult swim] original shows. I was able to come up with a total of 18 shows that were genuinely enjoyable at times. Yes, I realize this is most of the shows created for Adult Swim. Because of this, all of the shows that make the list are not necessarily great or even good. Adult Swim does have a pretty good track record (percentage-wise at least) of shows, but still I found that making this was not terribly difficult. Anyway, lets get on with it – we’ll go in reverse order.

18. Minoriteam

The premise is pretty much the entire plot: a team of superheros who are all ethnic stereotypes. While good for a few laughs, most of the humor comes from the superheros’ and villains’ names and superpowers. The best were probably the villains, which included The Corporate Ladder (an anthropomorphic ladder who smoked a pipe), The Standardized Test (a robot whose costume resembles a scantron sheet), and Racist Frankenstein (really, that’s just funny by itself).

17. Perfect Hair Forever

La la la la la la la...

Perfect Hair Forever was an inexplicable show riddled with non-sequiturs. Despite only being 7 episodes long, Perfect Hair Forever’s creation actually spanned 2.5 years. The pilot was aired sometime in 2004 and the additional episodes weren’t created until much later, including the finale which wasn’t shown until 2007. Though the part-anime parody, part-insanity show had some good moments, I think what I’ll most remember is the terrifying song of Action Hotdog.

16. Saul of the Mole Men

Unless I’m mistaken, Saul was the first non-animated Adult Swim show. The aesthetic for show is that of an overambitious public access channel. It featured ridiculous costumes, intentionally terrible special effects, and a fantastic over-the-top Buffalo accent (“I just wanna study raaacks”). Despite all the intentional silliness, the show’s plot was ambitious for its 15 minute time slot. The plot was a continuous storyline, which doesn’t work so well in the allotted brief weekly segments (think Prince Valiant, where you have one panel that recaps previous events, one the previews coming events, and only one with actual stuff going on).

Arbitrary song of the day: Malcolm Middleton – Solemn Thirsty

Sam Lloyd is Jeff Van Gundy

Or maybe the other way around. If you haven’t seen this commercial yet, you probably don’t know who Jeff Van Gundy is, but here it is anyway: [link] . He looks just like Ted from Scrubs and his line in this ad makes it seem even more so.

Arbitrary song of the day: Circulation – “Limited 5″ (like/as a remix of The Strangers – “Golden Brown”)

The next Aaron Sorkin show

I really love Aaron Sorkin’s TV shows. Sports Night had snappy banter, a great cast, and an excellent balance between humor and drama. The laugh track for the first 1/2 of the first season is really creepy and out of place, leading me to believe that ABC didn’t know what to make of this show. Sports Night only lasted two years because of this (the eventual purchaser of the fictional television show said, “Anybody who can’t make money off of Sports Night should get out of the money-making business.”). Well, that and because TV audiences are incredibly dumb (Two and a Half Men has been on for five years, really!). The West Wing was all about the drama, bringing one of the greatest ensemble casts ever to television. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip had some issues. First, the fictional show wasn’t very funny (additional writers would have been needed to fix this), too many romances at once (Matt/Harriet, Jordan/Danny, Lucy/Tom), and that it focused too much on Matt/Harriet’s romance (far less interesting when compared to the network stuff going on with Lou Grant and Brian Hackett). But even with this issues, the show had great potential and Sorkin and co. were finally figuring out the right buttons to push as the series neared what would be its end.

As a disclaimer, I should state that I have little knowledge of the television industry, Aaron Sorkin’s plans, or stuff along those lines. I know Aaron Sorkin is currently pushing for a film script to get made, but that’s it. These are merely some ideas I had about a premise that I would love to see.

Summary: A small-market sports franchise front office struggles to outsmart their league rivals while ownership tries to cut payroll. The town is hungry for a winner, with this franchise having had a very respectable history. New hires are made with a couple industry outsiders, long-time baseball scouts, and probably an ex-player.

Cast: The GM will probably played by either a young “hotshot” guy or a kickass older dude like Philip Baker Hall. The main two or three characters will be similar to the stars of Sorkin’s past few shows in age and personality. Joshua Malina will of course be in it (as the stats guy – obviously!). There will probably be an olderish female head of marketing or press. Among the hires will be a young female scout (or consultant or something) – she will be controversial and will inevitably fall in love with someone. The owner will be a general sort of bad guy executive, though he will have a right-hand man who is kickass and convinces the owner to be kickass on occasion. The owner and the right-hand man will have disparate ages. There could be some fun player (coaches, managers, too) cameos with mock interviews. These cameos could help be facilitated by the network, which we will get to later.

Plot(s): The plots here are limitless. There are countless ones to be stolen from the annals of sports history. Draft day will be unbelievable. Sports drafts are exciting on their own, but infuse quality direction and snappy dialog, Sorkin could make some seriously compelling television. Maybe ownership wants to move the franchise. Maybe a player tests positive for steroids. Heck, maybe the owner turns out to be a Nazi. In any case, almost all plot lines will be off the field.

Production: First off, the network. The antenna networks seem impatient with Sorkin’s work and their audiences are generally fickle and stupid. I think cable would be a good call. HBO or FX might be good, but I think the ESPN audience would eat up a show about a front office. This would be a huge investment for the network, but I think the regular ESPN audience would be captivated and it would bring casual or even non-sports fans to ESPN, which ESPN seems to want to do. They did good work with The Bronx is Burning from the few episodes of the mini-series I’ve seen. They would probably need to be wiling to give Sorkin a lot of freedom with the series and a decent budget in order to get him to work on a cable series. Maybe even a couple guaranteed years to ensure Sorkin that he won’t get cut short like he did with Sports Night and Studio 60.  ESPN would also have an easier time getting sports personalities (heck, they could easily shoot mock SportsCenter segments), players, and perhaps using some real team and league names.  In case it wasn’t implied already, the franchise itself will have to be entirely fictional and the other major teams involved in the plot would probably need to be fictional as well.

I’m not quite sure what sport would be best for this. Baseball and basketball are probably the best two choices, as football doesn’t really have any exciting trades or much in-season front office decisions. Basketball would probably make it easier to shoot the necessary sports scenes (there will be some after all) as there is a small playing field, fewer players, and generally has more easily repeatable actions, though digital effects could make baseball scenes easier.

Someone needs to make this happen.

Arbitrary song of the day: Joy Division – “Love Will Tear Us Apart”