10/1/13
View Logs: Hello Ladies Season 1 Prologue
I love British humor. There's just something about it that strikes my core. Maybe it's the very off-kilter but still realistic dialogue. Maybe it's the very snarky but subtle asides that the British are so good at. Maybe it's the strange way that many British comedy characters display pretension and insecurity at the same time. Well, no matter, point is British comedies have a very distinct style that I always feel is under-appreciated outside of the Anglo-Saxon country. While comedies in both America and Asia tend to value over-exaggerations and over-the-top craziness, British comedies seek to find the humor in everyday life. To the Brits, real life is crazy enough and there's no need to try to exaggerate it more than fiction already inherently does. I love that philosophy.
So you can imagine that I'm very excited for Stephen Merchant's Hello Ladies. A new HBO comedy (ok so technically this isn't a "British" comedy but it's a comedy in the style of it much like Avatar is anime but not made in Japan) about an Englishman trying to look for a relationship in modern LA. Admittedly, HBO comedies are very atypical for American comedies like The New Girl or The Big Bang Theory or even Modern Family. HBO tends to operate on similar philosophies that have made UK TV overall just great. Despite that, there's still that little bit of exaggeration that still makes HBO comedies fairly American. Not that that is a bad thing. Just saying that I'm aware HBO comedies are more alike their UK counterparts than their American relatives.
Anyways, so after committing myself to Dads... I've decided to add another comedy to my view logs line up and one that, hopefully, will be on the opposite extreme of the quality scale to Dads. Hopefully this will far off set the experience I've been having with that atrocity. I swear Dads represents everything horrible about mainstream American sitcoms. I will admit that the premise of Hello Ladies isn't exactly original in of itself. But, hopefully, Stephen Merchant and his staff writers can pull some new, interesting, and hilarious moments. Great writers can sometimes "outwrite" a mundane or even bad premise. So I have faith in Stephen who, for the first time, will not be partnering with Ricky Gervais on this project.
Also, I must note that I'll be comparing this to both Curb Your Enthusiasm and Louie. Two of the greatest comedies I've seen in the past half-decade. While Louie is one of my all time favorites, Curb Your Enthusiasm can actually go a little overboard. Sometimes the show's title is ironic in the sense that if it curbed it's enthusiasm just slightly it might be way better. But I suppose some people just really like watching extremely neurotic people. To be there's a line and Larry David can get a little one note. Which is something Stephen Merchant can easily fall into with Hello Ladies.
But we'll see! I'd probably die of happiness if I see a Karl Pilkington cameo ;)
