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Hercules Suffers NBC’s KATH & KIM!!
SPOILER ALERT !!
I am – Hercules!!
Each of the Big Three networks premieres a show tonight based on a show airing overseas. CBS has “The Eleventh Hour,” ABC has “Life On Mars” and NBC has “Kath & Kim.”
An unfunny comedy adapted for NBC by writer-producer Michelle Nader (“The King of Queens”), “Kath” is about an appallingly self-absorbed mother-daughter team.
The sitcom is teeming with unpleasant characters mouthing terrible jokes. When confronted with the prospect of dancing to hip-hop, Kath’s boyfriend protests, “I wouldn’t want to break a hip. Hop.” Kim says stuff like, “My marriage is over! O.V.U.R.!” (I may be misquoting, but the gags come on a screener I’m determined not to re-watch.)
On the upside, we do get to see a lot of gorgeous Selma Blair making a lot of (admittedly amusing) sour faces while cavorting in her undies and short-shorts and bellyshirts. (Candidly, if she dressed like this in “Zoe Bean” the show might still be on the air.) Also, NBC has wised up to the fact that laughtracks are the worst things ever, and happily does not employ one here.
USA Today gives it one star (out of four) and says:
… programmers have scheduled [NBC] like they're college kids furnishing an apartment out of mom's hand-me-downs and tourist schlock from an over-the-border discount store. The result so far this season is a rare double play: the worst new drama in the camp revival Knight Rider, coupled now with the worst sitcom in the Australian remake Kath & Kim. …
Entertainment Weekly gives it an “C-minus” and says:
… The core problem with K&K is that there's no character to root for. These days, we don't need to identify with sitcom characters or even love them. (Garry Shandling and Ricky Gervais proved that, immortally.) But we do need an occasionally recognizable — if silly — human, or a compelling relationship, to keep us coming back. For all of Shannon's luminescence and Blair's intense glower, neither Kath nor Kim is alive in this way. …
TV Guide gives it a “1” (out of 10) and says:
… Dreadful. …
The New York Times says:
… should be funnier, and could yet be, but the pilot disappoints. …
The Los Angeles Times says:
… a mother/daughter Odd Couple that is drained almost immediately of any comic value except for the black hole of anger and narcissism that is Blair's Kim. Spoiled rotten girls are funny. Spoiled vicious girls are not. … desperately tries to caricature both family dynamics and consumer culture but winds up just abusing its terrific cast.
The Chicago Sun-Times says:
… satiric comedy only works if it's funny. And in this case, it's not. …
The Washington Post says:
… cleverly funny … a frantically tacky fracas. …
The San Francisco Chronicle says:
… goes into the record books on these shores as a contender for worst remake ever. NBC sent the first two episodes of "Kath & Kim," and both were jaw-dropping in their awfulness. …
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:
NBC's comedy drought continues. New entry "Kath & Kim" offers a few laughs but it's mostly a dumb dud.… an unpleasant way to pass a half-hour.
The Boston Globe says:
… just doesn't cut it. There's something essential missing at the core … "Kath & Kim" is proof - yet again, my friends - that creating a successful sitcom is a stubbornly mysterious process, that even a collection of the very best ingredients can make for a tasteless stew. …
Variety says:
… Snide but not smart, "Kath & Kim" will likely leave American audiences scratching their heads, wondering what Australians saw in the concept -- or if something was seriously lost in translation. The producers have sought to give the project a Yank accent mostly by having their low-class protagonists reference National Enquirer-type gossip about U.S. stars, but the show irritates more than it amuses. Most fans of the better NBC sitcoms surrounding it that say "G'day" probably won't be able to say "G'bye" fast enough. …
The Hollywood Reporter says:
… lacks the charm of the original. Worse, the characters in the NBC show are so exaggerated that the whole thing feels like a skit. A long, long skit. … By the second episode -- about a third of which incongruously takes place in a gay bar -- you're forced to concede that the two characters, as written, have a combined repertoire of a single note.
8:30 p.m. Thursday. NBC.
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I don't get why anyone here likes the show, let alone why an American studio would want to remake it for an American audience... oh wait...
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Then it definitely sucks. The only reason Kath and Kim was funny at all in Australia (it went downhill from when it moved from the national broadcaster to a commercial station from what I've heard) was because it was sending up characters that we all knew really existed. They're kind of like Australia's answer to chavs - cashed up bogans we call them - and K&K initially copped a lot of flak for making fun of them. If the US version can't find a comparable type of people there, then why remake the show at all?
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The whole point of the original was that Kim thought she was a goddess, but with all that muffin top on show, she was more slag than anything else.The yank producers miss the joke YET again!
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The praise this got in the UK was along the lines of. you must see this show . I did and I could not stand it all. Aussies have Thos Accint, ya knoi. can be grating, ya knoi? flaming sheilas. Strewth.....bleedin humourless pommes.
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The series was a succession of purposefully bad puns and worked for many of us Australians because it hit 'close to home'... cringe comedy works for me. I thought The Castle was a big in-joke for Australians to appreciate only, but Americans seem to have got it on some level. Molly Shannon gave absolutely no credit to the Australian series when interviewed on Leno, and I hope it tanks for her. Loud mouth bitch.
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emeraldboy, you do realise that the accents used in Kath and Kim are intentionally terrible and exaggerated, right?
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Belly shirts & undies not withstanding I guess this is one of yours.
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I didn't think this would translate well at all. Too bad. I liked the original up until they changed to a commercial network. Didn't seem as funny anymore... Oh, and that British person complaing about our Aussie accents has clearly been watching too much of Alf Stewart on Home & Away.
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You can't have "Molly Shannon" and then expect "funny" anyway. So it was a misfire from the start.
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We got enough mangling of the Irish lingo from Hollywood. Take a bow Ron Howard, Cruise and Kidman and far and away. Nobody mangled the irish lingo better that Lloyd bridges and tommy lee jones. Asbolutely fucking hilarious.
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"...we do get to see a lot of gorgeous Selma Blair making a lot of (admittedly amusing) sour faces while cavorting in her undies and short-shorts and bellyshirts."
I knew I would be making a sacrifice in avoiding this, but I still cannot bring myself to watch it.
DAMN YOU, TV PRODUCERS!!!! -
Couldn't they just make a show on NBC where Selma Blair plays a stripper, and gives the audience a lap dance every week.
You can look, but you can't touch!
YES, with nudity! Fuck the FCC! It's not their business to be the morality patrol.
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im gonna watch with the sound down and my dick out
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9 E.T. CW. Watch it.
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I expect them to get even worse tonight.
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Oct 09, 2008 5:50:26 PM CDT
As an Aussie, I gotta say I don't like the original either...
by paul t. ryan
The original is sneering cringe comedy made by upper-class folk to look down on suburbanites. Sure, it did hit the odd vein of truth, but just because something is well-observed, doesn't automatically make it funny.
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Sorry! Just assumed... But I sympathise with you about accent butchering. Paul T. Ryan, I don't think they were only looking down on suburbanites. There were several characters skewering the upper-class, the main example being the two women who worked in the gift shop. I dunno, I can definitely understand why people wouldn't like this, but when it first debuted here in Australia I found it much funnier than anything coming out of the US.
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he isn't delivering any Sons of Anarchy reviews.
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I understand why Kath & Kim are so popular here. I'm not a fan, but I remember the actors from their previous work (Fast Forward, The Comedy Company, The Panel, etc) and they're good actors/comedians. They know who they're sending-up, they know how to portray it well, and Australians love laughing at themselves if it's done well (ie. not like any recent Paul Hogan movie, and the less said about Kangaroo Jack the better).
I know actual real people that live like Kath & Kim. That's why the show works here. How it'll work overseas - well, I don't hold out hope.
As for our accents - we all have them and they're always done over-the-top on TV. Watch House and I think the Australian guy on there is pushing it a bit much, but he may have been told to so he doesn't sound too British. Average Australian accent - like an average American or British one, ie. perfectly fine. -
...call it the 30 minute pre-Office buffer. Yeah, not very good - a potentially good cast and while there were a few spatterings of mild chuckles, the whole package just doesn't work. Not sure who this would appeal to and suspect it won't make it past 6 EPs.
This Office though is goddam amazing!! -
Well, at least none of those accents are as painful as Mic Brumby on JAG... Especially as the guy playing him turned out not to be an Australian...
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the quick zoom-in on higgins after she bites the sandwich was hilarious.
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I haven't been more disapointed in an Americanized version of a foreign sitcom since Coupling. Unlike Coupling though, I have never seen or fallen in love with the foreign original. Granted, based on this pilot, I have no desire to either.
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to give Higgins his own sitcom, he was the best part of this POSand is it me or has Molly Shannon not aged well
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....Would be Good Guys, Bad Guys. Think on it. Pray on it.
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Nice one. It's been awhile since that, but what a good show.
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There is a hugely popular writer called Paul Howard. His creation is called Ross O Carroll Kelly. Slags off us dublin southsiders in his books and his stage play. Even though I was born in a place called Castleknock. Colin Farrell's stomping group. I lived in the Northeast of Ireland in Navan. I have been living in South Dublin for 20 years.
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Selma Blair is becoming less boinkable with each scowl.
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hahahaah fuck you nbc!
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