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Stephen Fry and Joel McHale team up in CBS's new hit comedy!

Started by Small Man Big Horse, May 18, 2016, 07:25:40 PM

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Small Man Big Horse

Ah, how I wish I was making this up:

QuotePopular British actor/comedian/writer/game show host Stephen Fry is set to co-star opposite Joel McHale in The Great Indoors, CBS' multi-camera pilot written by Mike Gibbons and directed by Andy Ackerman. The comedy, from CBS TV Studios, centers on Joel (McHale), an adventure reporter who must adapt to the times when he becomes boss to a group of millennials in the digital department of their magazine.

Fry will play Antonio, the charismatic founder of "The Great Outdoors" magazine, and a world traveler, explorer and adventurer. The employee-boss dynamic between Joel and Antonio is compared to that between Tina Fey's Liz Lemon and Alec Baldwin's Jack Donaghy on NBC's 30 Rock.

http://deadline.com/2016/03/stephen-fry-cast-the-great0indoors-cbs-comedy-pilot-1201720843/

This'll be shit I reckon alright but a bit of a disappointment?

Edit: Just googled and discovered that the writer Mike Gibbons created and wrote all of the much missed one season wonder The Ben Show, so maybe it'll be better than I've suggested.

Edit again: The AV Club posted a promo pic:



I'm back to thinking it'll be awful!

up_the_hampipe

Eventually Joel McHale will get a show that won't get cancelled. This is not it.


Hemulen

Christ, that promo pic looks like something off of Sesame Street. Everything about this project screams "disaster" but I can't help but feel slightly intrigued by the prospect. As much as I'm sick of Fry as a media personality, I can't deny that he's a bloody good comic performer when he's got the right material to work with.

Chances are that this will not constitute "the right material", though. For one, aren't CBS known for producing the safest, most middle-of-the-road, flavourless chaff when it comes to comedy? Also, please can we stop with the whole "millennials" thing now? Oh, those millennials with their tweets and internships and bisexuality! Ugh.

OK, the more I think about this the harder it is muster even the tiniest nugget of hope that it might be in any way bearable. At best it'll be the new Running Wilde - i.e. a few good people and ideas getting utterly mangled and reconstituted into stultifying mediocrity.

zomgmouse

This looks like Home Improvement but with... no you know what, but nothing. This looks like Home Improvement.


Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: checkoutgirl on May 19, 2016, 11:41:38 AM
A group of what?

It's what they call young people these days. Or very very annoying young people, at least.

mook

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on May 19, 2016, 12:51:17 PM
It's what they call young people these days. Or very very annoying young people, at least.

what! those cunts in their thirties?

Roy*Mallard

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on May 18, 2016, 07:25:40 PM

Edit again: The AV Club posted a promo pic:




1. Nerd 2. Upper class, stuffy out-of-date English type 3+4 The cool, sexy side of the show (they'll be an item by season 2) 5. Sassy Asian lady 6. Funny (and possibly gay) black guy.

All bases covered. So horribly predictable.

Ignatius_S

The setting of a magazine seems a little old fashioned.

There is a real magazine called The Great Outdoors, so a bit surprised that they've used that as a name for the fictional magazine.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: mook on May 19, 2016, 12:54:56 PM
what! those cunts in their thirties?

That's what young people are when you get to our age, mookums.

mook


bobloblaw

Five-minute trailer.

Good luck getting to the end, everybody.  I did, but only because I was transfixed by the possibility that it could somehow could get even worse as it went on.

It's basically The Newsroom meets Community via The Big Bang Theory but less than a third as good as any one of those. Shamelessly, there's even a bargain-basement version of Alison Brie's Annie.

https://twitter.com/GreatIndoorsCBS/status/733064674736889856

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: bobloblaw on May 19, 2016, 02:25:18 PM
Five-minute trailer.

Good luck getting to the end, everybody.  I did, but only because I was transfixed by the possibility that it could somehow could get even worse as it went on.

It's basically The Newsroom meets Community via The Big Bang Theory but less than a third as good as any one of those. Shamelessly, there's even a bargain-basement version of Alison Brie's Annie.

https://twitter.com/GreatIndoorsCBS/status/733064674736889856

Christ, it was far worse than I feared. I got about two minutes in and wanted to quit, and I regret bothering with the rest. The big studio 'awwwwww' when the bear was revealed was just unbelievably embarrassing stuff too, god knows why McHale and Fry signed on for this.

Quote from: Roy*Mallard on May 19, 2016, 01:28:16 PM
1. Nerd 2. Upper class, stuffy out-of-date English type 3+4 The cool, sexy side of the show (they'll be an item by season 2) 5. Sassy Asian lady 6. Funny (and possibly gay) black guy.

All bases covered. So horribly predictable.

Yeah, you got it in one, depressingly.

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

*less* good than the sodding Big Bang Theory?

....and Stephen Fry is the new Eric Idle. Maybe this show will be not quite as good as "Nearly Departed". Imagine that.

Jake Thingray

I can imagine it, I'm afraid. If this is the sort of thing the dear fellow is going to do in his new life in the States, he ought to come home pronto. He used to compare himself to Cleese in interviews in the 1980's, perhaps this will be his equivalent of Wednesday 9.30 (8.30 Central) or whatever it was called, or Cook's The Two Of Us. He didn't even get billing in that trailer, when I first saw the title of this thread, wondered how he could possibly be starring alongside Joel McCrea (one for the teenagers, there).

Urinal Cake

This should be cancelled but not before Fry makes enough money to justify this. It seems like one of those tween sitcoms on Disney/Nickelodeon.

This should have a trigger warning about the death of Fry's career before it.

derek stitt

So Fry is a fame hungry money grabbing shithouse, so what. Don't these Oxbridge comedy types always turn into the things they once (very amusingly) satirised?

I make no apologises for my class hatred or lack of hard evidence.

Alberon

The trailer is godawful mediocrity. The only positive I can offer is it looks from that like Fry's role is a glorified weekly cameo there to deliver the macguffin of the episode and then piss off. At least I hope so.

The show has the stench of death about it already so we can only hope Fry won't be tied up there for long.

Brundle-Fly

I quite liked the bear cub. I hope they develop his character a bit more as it was a little one note.

Hemulen

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on May 20, 2016, 04:00:09 PM
I quite liked the bear cub. I hope they develop his character a bit more as it was a little one note.

I know what you mean, but I'm sure they can do more with him over the course of the season. He's clearly going to be the breakout character of the show.

Small Man Big Horse

This has started now, and here is my exciting selection of thoughts whilst watching the pilot:

20 seconds in and this looks like the most 90s sitcom I've seen since, well, the 90s.

Hey, Joel McHale's character is exactly like Jeff Winger. Except more two dimensional.

2 minutes 41 seconds - This might be the worst sitcom I've seen in years. Still, not met Fry's character yet, maybe he'll save the day.

Surprisingly Fry's not actually too bad. It's a vaguely daft character but he does it well. Though it's not even close to being funny enough to save the show.

Sample joke if you don't believe my harsh criticism - Obnixious Millennial Woman: "What, I got passed over for a promotion again? But I've been here eight weeks!"

This has gone from being bland to actively horrible. The problem is that all the characters are terrible, the youngsters are either stupid or self-obsessed, whilst McHale's a dick, perhaps understandably, but not a funny one at all.

Sample joke 2:
Barman "How was work?"
Jeff Winger "Awful, I hurt a millennial's feelings."
Barman "When are millennial's feelings not hurt?"
Millennial "Hey"
Barman "See".

At the end of the episode McHale brings a small bear to the office to show the kids what real nature is. Whilst that sound you heard is Biggy orgasming at such an idea, it's painfully on the nose and not funny.

And it's finally over thank the lord. Though he should of course be blamed for this existing in the first place, the cunt. Anyway, I watch lots of shit, but nah, I'm not going to stick with this, it's bloody awful stuff.

tomasrojo

Peterman in Seinfeld was the first thing I thought of when I read the premise, and not just because Ackerman is on board.

I had assumed Fry would have another crack at getting a hit show in the States. He once muttered darkly in some interview about British actors making fools of themselves in America, which I always took to mean he felt a bit overshadowed by Laurie, which wasn't how he pictured their respective careers turning out. Maybe I'm just bad-minded.

marquis_de_sad

Are Millenials from Star Wars or Star Trek, I can never remember.

Shit Good Nose

Quote from: marquis_de_sad on November 04, 2016, 03:45:31 PM
Are Millenials from Star Wars or Star Trek, I can never remember.

I think you'll find it's what the fans of that fillum with Kris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd call themselves.

Ongoing name rights battle with Lance Henriksen fans.

Pit-Pat

It's hard to know who something like this is aimed at. Surely the target market can't be the demographic it portrays as pathetic idiots.

There's been a bit of a bizarre, anti-millenial mood in US TV relatively recently. It reminds me of that stupid speech here described as "The most honest three and a half minutes of television EVER" in which Jeff Daniels in The Newsroom describes the catastrophic state of American society and ultimately blames the generation who didn't vote for any of it.

Alberon

An interview with Fry here.

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/Stephen-Fry-loving-the-weather-of-The-Great-Indoors.html

Quote"One of the advantages of not believing in an afterlife is that there is a passionate need to feel that you fill every moment with excitement and change and difference. And that there are so many exciting opportunities in life and you'll never get them again. Because this is it. This is it," he said in an interview during a CBS party that evening outside West Hollywood's Pacific Design Center.

So the show might be crap, but he's having fun doing it.

Bad Ambassador

CBS is the American ITV - television for the 50-and-over market, so obviously blaming the young kids and their loud music for everything that's wrong with the world, like increased acceptance of other peopel regardless of gender, sexuality, race and religion. Not like in the good old days, when you could ride the trolley into town, have a great meal at Joe's, watch a lynching and still have change from a nickel.

Black_Bart

QuoteOne of the advantages of not believing in an afterlife is that there is a passionate need to feel that you fill every moment with excitement and change and difference. And that there are so many exciting opportunities in life and you'll never get them again. Because this is it. This is it," he said in an interview during a CBS party that evening outside West Hollywood's Pacific Design Center.

Which Fry has done by...? Oh yeah: Stealing the credit card of a family friend and going on a massive spree, doing lots of coke, slagging off corporations whilst making lots of dosh from them.

Pit-Pat

Quote from: Alberon on November 04, 2016, 03:59:57 PM
An interview with Fry here.

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/Stephen-Fry-loving-the-weather-of-The-Great-Indoors.html

So the show might be crap, but he's having fun doing it.

Interesting. I didn't realise prominent celebrity atheist Stephen Fry didn't believe in an afterlife.