Horse 898 - Krap and Kim

http://buzzsugar.com/1769136

If you want to make a truly horrid television program, why not do what so many have done before and give it to America to produce. Red Dwarf, The Office, The Kumars at Number 42 and now Kath and Kim are being remade for an "American" audience. In reality, that's the euphemism for an "unfunny" television show.

Take The Office - a perfectly understated British comedy which didn't need a laugh track and in fact was heightened by the semi-dead silence in which humour was dripped through the filter of black comedy via the delivery of verbal gaffes, unconscious racism, sexism and other social faux-pas. It was the very uncomfortableness of the show that made it funny, yet when produced for an American audience, this was replaced by a hideous pastiche of put down and sarcasm - truly the lowest form of wit and in this case rather poorly executed.

Kath & Kim is a different take on the comedy of the uncomfortable, but the filter is that of vanity through the eyes of characters who are most definately not high-class at all but believe otherwise. Although I think that the show is as funny as cholera, Kath & Kim plays on what former PM John Howard would have called "aspirationals" or what current PM Kevin Rudd would like to tell you are "working families". It is the sensibilites of decidedly ordinary people who actually think that they are brilliant and special and wait for it, glamorous, when they are very obviously not. Yet when I read an American preview for the new show I find this:
For one thing, it's great to see Molly Shannon with a sassy, blonde haircut and some seriously out-there clothes. For another, I'm loving the attitude Selma Blair's bringing to her role, falling somewhere between entitled princess and petulant teenager.

Or as Rove would say... what the..?




Sassy? Attitude? What in blue blazes is going on here? Oh look, there goes THE POINT whizzing past and sadly NBC, you missed it. It is only Kath & Kim themselves who would actually believe that they are "sassy" and/or possess "attitude", you can't hire "nice" or even "noice" people for the show because the whole premise falls down flat. THE POINT is that Kath & Kim really are horrible people, trying to somehow hide this and not altogether very successfully.

This show is destined to ride the very fast train to oblivion very very quickly, and I hope that it sinks without a trace because having a crappily remade version of an already tedious TV show that becomes popular merely saps even more viewing time from screens which should be better served with motor racing, decent crime or dramas or better yet... comedy that is actually funny.