Now that we're a couple weeks into a brand new year, broadcast television networks are starting to roll out their mid season replacements and cable television networks are premiering new shows or new seasons of shows.
Until last night, much of the mid season shows rolled out by network tv, such as The Cape, Bob's Burgers, Harry's Law, and Off the Map, haven't appealed to me. It wasn't until last night, when NBC unveiled their new "All Comedy Thursday" that I've had any interest in checking out new shows. And by new shows, I really just mean one show - Perfect Couples. Parks and Recreation also made its premier last night, but I don't really consider this to be a new season replacement, just that weird marketing ploy adopted by tv networks a couple years ago to compress an entire season of an existing show into half a season. It means less reruns, which is good, but it also means a longer wait for new episodes.
Perfect Couples, an ensemble cast sitcom that focuses on three different couples, was okay, it wasn't great and it wasn't terrible. It had the faults that pretty much all sitcoms tend to have in their premier episodes: it's flow was disjointed, the characters aren't well developed, and the interaction between the actors is awkward and choppy. Given time, these flaws can be resolved and it'll have to survive on good writing and characters, or die. I'll give it a couple episodes. The first episode of Outsourced was like that, and while it's not a great show, it's improved and isn't a complete waste of 30 minutes.
The big show last night was the return of Parks & Recreation, which nailed it. This was a sitcom that started out awkwardly too, but has really hit its stride - thanks to the writing and characters like Tom Haverford, Ann Perkins, and Ron Swanson. In this age of DVRs I'm not going to say too much about last night's show, but Swanson stole it.
I'm not gonna say too much at this point about the shows on cable networks, except I will recommend Shameless on Showtime, as well as suggesting that you check out the episodes from the original UK version that air on The Sundance Channel. I know USA premiered a new season of Royal Pains last night. The show worked good as a light, breezy summer series, we'll see how it does in the winter months.
Fox is rolling out a new show, Mixed Signals, on February 8th. This sitcom is based on the successful Ramzor from Israel. I saw the trailer back during the summer, and my curiosity was piqued. Instead of describing it, here's the trailer for your preview:
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