Hang Ups

[Norton Canes]

Started on C4 last night

Comedy series with an all-star cast and Stephen Mangan as Richard Pitt - an unconventional therapist trying to keep his life, and patients, from falling apart

Sitcom? Sketch show? Shameless rip-off of 'Help'? The premise is that most scenes are viewed as caught on mobile device cameras, though the one or two that aren't consequently look a bit out of place. Basically Stephen Mangan is the vaguely humourous 'mortar' that holds a lot of funnier comedy 'bricks' in place, and it's the guest stars that will mostly keep people watching. Sarah Hadland stole the show this week as a foul-mouthed cat-hater with body hair issues.

Probably would have been better without the family-base linking scenes, but what put me off most was the speed at which a lot of the conversations between Mangan and his clients (on different cameras) were edited. You could see the actors were largely trying to make their performances relaxed and nuanced but when cut together with Mangan there was barely any space between each line, meaning that the dialogue tumbled out too quickly. Perhaps these days programme makers have been issued edicts not to leave gaps between speech in case viewers turn over.

Anyway overall it was pretty good with a few really funny lines and I'll keep watching.

[olliebean]

Watched the first few minutes of this this morning. I loved the mostly improvised Lisa Kudrow web series it's based on, but this felt like they'd just taken the basic idea of that, got scared at the concept of improvising it, and instead bolted on a script full of crap, contrived jokes. But I didn't really give it a fair go (I wasn't really in the mood) and I gather that once it gets to the actual therapy sessions they are mostly improvised, as in the original, so I'll probably give it another go at some point.

[Norton Canes]

Just watched ep2 and without going into too much detail - or in fact any at all - it was really good. So bump.

[neveragain]

Halfway through ep 2. I find this show to have very little charm and I really don't care about Mangan's character's home life. If it was just patients might be a lot better.

[olliebean]

Caught up with the first two episodes now. It's very hit and miss - I like most of the therapy sessions, and some of the non-therapy one-on-one Skype stuff, but most of the family stuff is leaving me cold. I reckon they'd have done better to make it just the therapy sessions, and make up the time by being a bit less aggressive with the editing.

Interestingly, I'm finding what the therapy calls are mostly reminding me of is Down the Line.

[Norton Canes]

Yeah, not sure why they're pushing the stuff with the kids - I can't even remember which ones are theirs. But the drunk mother and wife's boss storylines have provided some great scenes.

[olliebean]

Can't see myself watching another series of this. I seriously lost patience with it by the end. If only they'd had a bit more faith in the core idea, the therapy sessions (and actually made him a vaguely credible therapist), and not kept bolting on more and more extra-curricular craziness. The last episode felt like a farce written by someone who has no idea how to make a farce work.

[Norton Canes]

Had forgotten about this actually, after being on holiday for a couple of weeks. Might try to catch up. Any decent guest stars? Did David Tennant return?

[steveh]

This was a bit of an odd show. There were some reasonable laughs but it was like it didn't have sufficient confidence in its core web therapy concept so it turned it more into a family and work drama but then squandered those set-ups too and didn't really go anywhere with them. I don't think it helped having such a large cast so from week to week I couldn't always remember the web of interactions and it left little time for character development of each person. Seems to have got good reviews though, but then it perhaps has that recognition factor for journos. On the plus side, the seamless merging of online and real life and bringing in sources from different devices I thought was handled well.