NTSF:SD:SUV:: - Season 1

NTSF:SD:SUV:: is a spin-off of Childrens' Hospital (in our universe, within the meta-fiction it's just another show in their nightmare world of silly, generic network TV shows taken to an extreme), and while it hasn't managed to become as good as that series yet, it's still a lot of fun and has enough promise to turn into a similar coming together of strong writing, a great cast, and a bunch of off-the-wall ideas. Paul Scheer stars as Trent Hauser, the lead agent of an anti-terrorism unit that protects San Diego from all manner of bizarre crimes. Captain Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager plays his boss and two-time ex-wife with an eye patch, Martin Starr plays a computer expect who's not much of a character but still does a good job, and Rob Riggle plays the nutty President of the Navy. Peter Serafinowicz does the voice of the their robot assistant, and a couple people I don't really know play fellow agents, one who constantly makes reference to his native Alaska and another who ably fills every possible cliche of a female lead in a cop show.

Besides the main cast, there's plenty of great talent in the guest cast from week to week, like Jeff Goldblum as a high-stakes gambler who makes full use of jurisdiction laws and Adam Scott as a rival to Trent who's confined to a wheelchair. The cast frequently props up episodes even when their plots are a bit bare and reliant on a single wacky joke. Most of the stories are actually pretty familiar if you've spent any time watching shows like this, often with just a couple little tweaks that push them into the realm of the fully ridiculous. Once in a while they'll go for broke with an alternate universe episode or something, but a big part of the fun is how close the show really is to what it parodies at certain times. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what they can do now that they're more familiar with what they can get away with on Adult Swim.

Running Wilde

Running Wilde really never had a chance. It was never on consistently, getting bumped in favor of episodes of Tuesday night companions Raising Hope and Glee. Then its few remaining episodes were briefly scheduled for the dregs of Sunday nights in December, before Fox just pulled it from the schedule completely. No more show. I'll probably watch the last five episodes whenever they pop up on DVD somewhere, but I don't really need to to pass judgment on the show. There's a lot of talent behind this series, created by Arrested Development's Mitchell Hurwitz and star Will Arnett, and also featuring the lovely Keri Russell and Peter Serafinowicz in possibly his most amusing role. But the show itself simply isn't good enough for its cancellation to be a real tragedy. They never really found a proper footing in these eight episodes, which ranged from mildly enjoyable to mostly boring. It's just hard to mourn a series that never made you say, "Wow, that was great." I generally liked watching it, but the plots never seemed to go anywhere, and the inspiration just wasn't there. It's like they were trying too hard to make it more accessible than Development but forgot to actually make it good, and they ended up really pleasing no one.

Arnett plays Steve Wilde, the heir of the Wilde oil company. Russell is Emmy, the one who got away (there's a somewhat amusing metajoke to Steve constantly trying to please a girl called Emmy, and they thankfully never hammer it too hard), all the way to Africa. She's helping a native tribe survive with her daughter Puddle (who does some obvious narration and little else) and her fiance played by David Cross (unfortunately not a very interesting character), but through a series of events ends up living in a tree fort on Steve's estate back in America. There he tries to win her back over, but it's a struggle as they're constantly butting heads over everything imaginable. He's rich! She lives in the wilderness! These stories never get too complex as they basically just try to one-up and manipulate each other, and the fact that the show's central concept is so standard really hurts it. Serafinowicz plays Fa'ad, Steve's eccentric neighbor, and it's always a highlight when he shows up to outdo Steve's events and functions and show off his immensely thick chest hair, although he doesn't save the show by himself, and neither do the servants that make up the rest of the cast. I really wanted it to be good, but the truth is it's a show that Fox was justified in canceling. I wish I didn't have to wait until an undetermined date to see the rest of what they filmed, but like I said, it won't make a big difference.

Look Around You

In the same fashion as Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Look Around You is a shortlived, silly British comedy pretending to be a serious show from a couple decades earlier that found a new home late at night on Adult Swim. The first season (which actually predated Darkplace) is pretty different from the second, although I thought they were both pretty hilarious. The first is a bunch of 11 minute educational programs for science students, as the pleasant narrator tells all sorts of incorrect things about topics like maths, iron, and ghosts, and various scientists perform absurd experiments, often with way more steps than necessary, to prove their points. It's pretty absurd and a lot of fun.

I think I probably got more enjoyment out of the second season though, which took the format of a half hour news program focused on new inventions and innovations in science, as the four presenters found all sorts of interesting things like a robot that performs surgery, an orchestra of produce, and a high tech new restaurant for all the cool teenagers to get their casserole at. There's a thread running through the whole thing as it leads up to the "live" finale where all the best discoveries are brought back for an invention of the year contest, and the winner is presented an award by archive footage of Prince Charles. There's a bunch of cameos by faces of British comedy such as Simon Pegg and the other Spaced guys, which makes sense after recognizing co-creator and host Peter Serafinowicz from Shaun of the Dead. Robert Popper and he are supposedly working on a new series for Adult Swim, and I'm very interested in finding out what that is.