Thursday, June 07, 2012

Female Oriented Comedy Shows On The Rise

Yeah, so they have been for a while but at least three of them within the last few months have really generated a lot more attention than usual (though not necessarily for the right reasons at times).


2 Broke Girls: It's been airing on E4 for a while now and thanks to my sister, I got suckered into watching this show and oddly enjoying it, despite the writing being ridiculously amateurish and the depiction of the non-white characters being terrible in places, nearly offensive in others. The premise is interesting enough - ostracised rich girl Caroline (Beth Behrs) and sarky poor girl, Max (Kat Jennings) live and work together in a diner whilst trying to save money in order to set up a cupcake business. It's a pretty simplistic show with the jokes so blatantly obvious at times, a three year old could've come up with something cleverer but the rapport with the two leading ladies is second to none brilliant and there's also the lovely, Chestnut, Caroline's horse, who is probably the best character on the show. It's a fun show but hardly demanding viewing.


Don't Trust The Bitch In Apartment 23: Yeah, I'm an adult and I am not bleeping out a word, even if ABC themselves (and E4) are prone to doing it when promoting this series. There's an element of mean spirited humour to this particular show with Chloe (Krysten Ritter) being the sort of roommate no self-respecting person would want to end up with. In the space of two episodes, Chloe has managed to fleece trusting but not spineless June (Dreama Walker) out of extra money, slept with her boyfriend on a birthday cake and even used June as a pawn against her own parents crumbling marriage. June at least got some payback by selling most of Chloe's stuff and is the better of the two characters by not being too naive or twee to watch. However, the highlight of this series so far is seeing James Van Der Beek (who has aged rather well) parodying himself in epic style as nine years since a particular show's end, he's unable to be seen as anything other than Dawson Leery. A fun enough series that will hopefully maintain it's solidness so far.


Girls: I was going to do an individual blog for this particular show but I changed my mind and although I've only seen a few clips, it does seem to be a Sex And The City for the twenty something audience as our leading lady Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham, creator of the show too) is an aspiring writer, trying to make it in New York, "one mistake at a time" with her friends, art galllery assistant, Marnie Michaels (Allison Williams) and cousins, British Bohemian Jessa Johansson (Jemina Kirke) and Shoshanna Shapiro (Zosia Mamet), the one who is still a virgin. The show has been something of a mixed bag for US audiences and while the ratings haven't been trailblazing, HBO have already commissioned it for a second season and even James Franco wrote up an interesting article for the series, which I'm linking. I'll give it a proper go when SkyAtlantic get around to airing it.

James Franco On Girls: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-franco/girls-hbo-lena-dunham_b_1556078.html

2 Broke Girls and Don't Trust The Bitch In Apartment 23 air on E4, Thursdays at 9pm and 9.30pm while Girls will air on SkyAtlantic from September.

No comments: