3 out of 5

Developed by: Larry Charles, Billy Crystal, Matt Nix, Ben Wexler

covers season 1

It’s… enjoyably bland.

While my love of Always Sunny was proven to me by how immediately it made me laugh – uncontrollably – out loud, I don’t think I’m particularly hard to make laugh, and I do so freely.  But, yes, my appreciation of something that’s attempting to be comedy can, to a certain extent, be measured by whether or not that it breaks that ‘out loud’ barrier.  And the comedies I currently watch have all managed to do so, more or less frequently.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t laugh while watching The Comedians.  Internal giggles, sure, but I’d sit there, slightly perplexed by the show, sorta not sure how I felt about Josh Gad, and not laugh.  However: I looked forward to watching it each week.  The show, based on a Swedish concept, follows the Office ‘mockumentary’ vein of humor, wherein we’re watching a documentary on our characters, allowing for scripted situation comedy blended with look-into-the-camera interviews.  There’s an extra layer of meta here, however, as the documentary is on a sketch show starring Billy Crystal and Josh Gad that they’re filming for FX; meanwhile we’re watching a show starring Billy and Josh (as themselves) on FX.  And for the most part, the surface level humor also follows that Office Americanized style of the UK deadpan, which involves putting people in uncomfortable situations and watching them writhe.  This is where the show is amusing but fairly unoriginal, so you recognize the humor but it’s not exactly new at this point and so, at least for me, it doesn’t illicit much o’ that outward laughter.

But.  There’s something weird going on between the lines.  You’re dealing with Billy and Larry Charles, and both certainly have a long enough history in entertainment to know their shit about what they’re presenting to us.  And ‘behind the scenes’ movie / show like this has a ring of truth to it, but this feels even truthier, and the uncomfortable we hate each other / we work with each other relationship Crystal’s and Gad’s ‘fictionalized’ versions share is compellingly uncomfortably real.  So it’s like the actual jokes don’t matter, but the setup is interesting to watch.  The show seems to realize it too, as it shifts more and more focus on this dynamic as things go on and, to the credit of the actors… you know it must be fiction but the line seems effectively blurry.  This is actually ideal for any of these mockumentary send-ups, and is something the Office could not achieve, being, as it was, fully fictional.

As with any of the shows you might link in this genre (Arrested Development, for example), the side characters often emerge as favorites.  Matt Oberg’s Mitch, an eager-to-please head writer is all too recognizable, and Megan Ferguson’s Esme – the clueless PA – nails a distinctive blase tone.  But especially hilarious (okay, she did make me laugh) is the perpetually, just, wrong producer Kristen, played by Stephnie Weir.

I would enjoy seeing where this show goes.  If, like FX-mate Louie, it gets the time to start evolving its style over subsequent seasons.  Alas, I’m sure my unlaughing experience isn’t unusual, which is not something Louie struggled with in its first season, and I wouldn’t fault viewers for not supporting the show based on that.  Is The Comedians funny?  Sure.  But as its ultimate joke, for a show with a title that would seem to directly claim a market on chuckles, it’s not the most interesting aspect of watching it.