I am – Hercules!!


An FX sitcom about a fantasy football league (remember that secret Paul Rudd was keeping From Leslie Mann in “Knocked Up”?) created and written by Jeff Schaffer (“Seinfeld,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) and his hot former d-girl wife Jackie Marcus Schaffer, “The League” stars Paul Scheer (one third of “Human Giant”), Nick Kroll (the funniest title character in ABC’s “Cavemen”) and Leslie Bibb (Carley Bobby from “Talledega Nights”).

There’s a lot of chatter among some critics about how groundbreakingly offensive the show is, but if you’ve seen “South Park” or “Entourage” or “The Aristocrats” or a Judd Apatow movie or sat in a comedy club or watched a Comedy Central roast or listened to Howard Stern’s radio show or Adam Carolla’s podcast, this is going to seem like pretty well-trodden ground.

As I recall, even FX’s (much funnier) “Testees” far eclipsed “The League” in terms of raunch.

Is “The League” funny? Not so much. Elicited no laughter from myself, who seemed to see every joke marching up Fifth Avenue. I’d guess the male half of the Schaffers is not the magic ingredient over on HBO’s “Curb.”

Critics are divided:

The New York Times says:

… in its astonishingly raunchy way, “The League” is pretty funny whether or not you’re a fantasy geek, assuming you’re a TV-MA kind of person. …

The Los Angeles Times says:

… There's nothing wrong with a show about lovable losers, but they have to be, you know, lovable. Here, the men seem to be products of their writers' contempt; they're such babies that even their profanity doesn't rise from the potty. …

The Chicago Tribune says:

… All in all, it would be easier to give the macho, frat-house vibe a pass if the jokes were funny, but much of the humor in the first two episodes falls flat. …

The Washington Post says:

… How is it possible to screw up America's favorite two contact sports -- sex and football -- this badly? … In the hubbub to get to the next wee-wee gag, the script forgets to mention a reason why any of these people have the slightest interest in football …

The San Francisco Chronicle says:

… ridiculously funny … traffics in shoulder-punching guy humor with an emphasis on lust and body parts. …

The Philadelphia Inquirer says:

… So much of the supposed humor involves coarse jokes about genitalia and sexuality that can't even be described in a newspaper. Sunny has plenty of that stuff, too, but it's almost always in service of broader, funny situations. …

The Cleveland Plain Dealer says:

… FX is more apt to slip on the proverbial banana peel when sliding into the comedy field. More depressing proof of this arrives at 10:30 tonight with the relentlessly crude, obvious and stilted "The League." …

The Kansas City Star says:

… So, is “The League” good reprehensible or bad reprehensible? Is it almost charming in its displays of loutish, self-centered, Peter Pan behavior, like the show it follows on FX, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” ... or is it simply despicable, like “Gossip Girl”? I would say the latter, with one caveat: At least “Gossip Girl” is funny. …

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:

… begins poorly with too much emphasis on the fantasy football league the guys on the show participate in. … is more accessible in its second episode when the focus is on friendship among the guys and their respective marital relationships. …

The Newark Star Ledger says:

… It's the worst of all possible worlds. It's a comedy about fantasy sports, which will turn off anyone who doesn't play. But it has precious little fantasy sports content, which will turn off anyone who's experienced the horror and silliness of fantasy and wants a comedy to try to capture it. …

The Boston Herald says:

… Grade: D … about as funny as the Patriots’ loss in Super Bowl XLII … A show like this could make you hate football. …

The Boston Globe says:

… There’s a place in the world for good crude comedy. But guy humor about porn and girl-on-girl action has been deployed in every other similarly themed comedy. With a few more original situational jokes and male dirty secrets, “The League’’ wouldn’t feel played-out so quickly.

Entertainment Weekly says:

… You know men who devote an absurd amount of time to mocking one another? I do, and I call them ''me and my friends.'' Maybe that's why I so enjoyed this sitcom about a group of thirtysomething pals and their fantasy football league …

Variety says:

… crude but consistently funny … The pressure to be as edgy as FX's dramas can become its own kind of trap -- being smutty is harder than it looks without sacrificing wit -- but "The League" comes close to the goal of creating a TV show with "The Hangover"-type appeal. …

The Hollywood Reporter says:

… In the end, the legacy of "League" will almost certainly have less to do with the overall quality of the series, which is a mixed bag, than with the basic-cable taboos it shatters into itsy-bitsy pieces. …

10:30 p.m. Thursday. FX.