Somebody's Gonna Buy a House

MY INTEREST in the annual orgy of money and hope against hope known as "The Upfronts" waxes and wanes from year to year depending on whether or not I'm working, and on what.

This year, my interest is dulled a bit by starting a new job. I'm paying attention, but not really paying attention. When the dust settles at the end of next week, however, I'll be more interested, because who gets picked up and who gets cast might have a bearing on one or two things I'm working on.

No, not in that way. No, I'm not getting a job down south. I'm still a lowly Canadian TV writer. Bathe in my neurotic inadequacy, damn you! Bathe in it!

This is a very tense weekend in L.A. and environs. I'm sure the phone calls are flying fast and furious, as gym chatter is taken as gospel or blasphemy, depending on the listener/gossipers body fat index and glucose level. Lunches and their seating plans will be dissected like chicken bones in some fucked-up santeria ritual. There are a lot of people who were working who, come Friday, won't be. There are people who are writers, who, come Friday, will be series creators. The industry will realign itself along a new power centre.

And then in the Fall, the audience will get a chance to weigh in and some (most!) of these new Masters of the Universe will be unceremoniously given the bum's rush.

Though I've found it lackluster in general this year, the nagging subplot that's held the most interest for me on Entourage is the upcoming premiere of Johnny Drama's Ed Burns-created Pilot. I really hope it's a hit, just because I'd like to see Johnny dealing with fame again -- especially if they do the requisite thing and show Vincent's fame starting to cool without a new project. That would be awesome.

Back in the real world, though, I may bloviate on the radio about season finales, but like most writers, my mind's already more in next season. What will the new trends be? What's going to break new ground? What will be the freshman show that everyone will be spec'ing one year from now?

Diane's got a funny little link-story about how anything you read this weekend is bogus. Til you get the tap and are told you're flying to New York, anything goes.

After all, as Bill Carter pointed out in his highly entertaining Desperate Networks, you never know when Phil Rosenthal is going to drop by a meeting. If not for him, no CSI-inspired forensic porn, no cash cow falling into Alliance Atlantis' lap, and maybe -- just maybe -- Tony Danza would be a bigger star than ever.

Here in the North, far from the klieg lights of big money American TV, the Canadian Upfronts -- such as they are -- happen in a few weeks, once the U.S. place their bets. Canadian execs go down and make deals and CTV comes back with all the best shows.

Ooops. Did I say that out loud?

Canadian Upfronts are funnier and sadder. They're more like sales parties. They occasionally import two of the lesser (less Desperate?) Housewives, a minor Soprano or two, or the young guy from that show that nobody's heard of yet.

They also forget to invite the creators of their homegrown shows. I'm not kidding. It's happened more than once.

Of the early American calls, I'm pleased about Friday Night Lights. Pleased because I never watched it. Now, not only do I finally have a series to catch up with on DVD, but it's coming back. Score! Personally, considering the fact that most of my favorite shows are currently on NBC, I'm sorry for their troubles, but not that troubled, you know? Desperate times leads to creative risk, and maybe the next TV revolution. A guy can dream.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, The Bionic Woman from David Eick, Chuck, Journeyman and Life have all been told to staff up.

There's enough nostalgia in me to hope The Bionic Woman goes somewhere. (And considering how often super, asskicking Lyndsey Wagner got patrontized, it will be interesting to see a post-feminist or third wave feminist take on the idea.) If it's good in any way, I think it's gonna find an audience, and it'll be the genre spec next May. We'll see, though. And since Glen Morgan's on board, could this mean a return of a certain mythic writer geek godhead figure? Hmmm. Hmmm.

Just as long as they "re-imagine" the fembot fight:



Mmm. Fembots.

I'm fairly Meh on Chuck, but I do loves me the Kevin McKidd, and the fanboy in me likes Journeyman's premise. (think Quantum Leap.)

I would like to try to explain to you how fast I hope ABC's Caveman show goes down, but...words fail. If it's a big hit with the American public, I'm going to invite the Chinese to invade now, and just get it over with.

I have high hopes for Action News, the Kelsey Grammer/Pat Heaton sitcom for Fox, as well as the cop show set in NOLA. Strangely, the thought of seeing Sarah Connor week after week doesn't thrill me.

As always, these suckers will surely disappoint. Most of em. Maybe you should hold off on buying that house.

Otherwise, to the new Masters of the Universe I say, "Congrats." Good luck nailing your template.

As always, if anybody has copies of these pilots in script or other form, I'd love to see'em. Daddy writes in Canada, and Daddy writes on the interweb. Daddy is not an insider.

Ratings, Shmatings

JOHN DOYLE, it seems, is almost owed a co-write for this column of late.

For the record, I've met Doyle but I don't really know him. We're slated to be on a panel together in Banff, though, so I'm fairly excited about that. I will make certain to ask him about the Brother, his cat, and his current choice for Most Irritating Canadian (Television Division.)

For now, though, I simply want to quote a bit from his column yesterday and make a couple of points:

An Associated Press story that ran in numerous newspapers in the past few days begins thus: "In TV's worst spring in recent memory, a startling number of Americans drifted away from television the past two months: More than 2.5 million fewer people were watching ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox than at the same time last year, statistics show."

Well, "statistics show" is the key phrase. The statistics come from Nielsen and, frankly, they are dubious. As the AP story acknowledges after offering hair-raising stats on lower viewing numbers for the networks, about 17 per cent of U.S. homes now have personal video recording devices such as TiVo. They can watch TV whenever they want, with ease. It's simple to set your TV to record all episodes of your favourite show and watch the episodes later, individually or in a marathon. The thing is, the Nielsen numbers reflect only a tiny fraction of viewers with PVRs and then document a show being watched only if it is viewed within 24 hours of originally airing.

In Canada, the Nielsen numbers are even more peculiar. The sample is small, the margin of error is huge. Nobody is going broke in the TV racket. Viewers are not abandoning TV in droves. They're watching what they want, when they want or when they can get to it, just like me.

I've got a couple of points here, one expandable to North America, the other mostly Canadian in nature.

1. The advent of PVR timeshifting is the time bomb that won't go away in ratings measurement.

When I was living in Vancouver earlier this year, I kind of stepped back into the 1970's. I didn't have a working PVR or VCR. So if I wanted to watch a show, I had to watch it when it was on the air. If I wanted to watch two shows that were opposite each other, I had to choose one.

This was really, really weird. It's completely alien to how I (and a vastly growing number of TV viewers) now experience TV. I have the Movie Channels on Pay, and I will occasionally graze them, but the ON DEMAND channel is why I subscribe. I never worry about missing a Sopranos if the PVR cacks up. I know it will be there for me the next day.

If I PVR a program, I will usually not watch it that night. I'm busy. I have three weeks of The Office and Lost on the PVR right now. I'm hoping to get to them this weekend. My Vancouver 'forced appointment viewing' only resulted in me abandoning several of the shows that I watched regularly: gone were 24 and Prison Break, and others. Shows that I quite liked, like Raines, I never really watched more than a couple eps, because I wouldn't bow to the tyranny of planting my ass in the seat when they wanted me to.

The whole PVRs only-count-if-you-watch-in-24-hours thing masks a bigger problem: commercial skipping. Everyone does it. I now pause a show at the top even when it's live so I can fast forward through the ads.

And I work in television.

They've started to discover that there are heavily PVR'd shows where, if you count the later viewings, the show 's ratings can be up by 17 or 18 percent. That's huge. But...

...those people aren't watching the ads. What to do?

It's a ticking time bomb that even Jack Bauer couldn't fix.

• The games played with ratings in Canada are part of the reason why they don't release ratings here.

As Doyle points out, in Canada the sample size is very small. The way statistical sampling works, if you have a properly selected sample of 1000 people or more, the margin of error is quite low.

But the more you go down, the more distorted the numbers get. And -- here's the real trick -- the smaller your numbers are, the more distorted they are.

So in other words, if the sample size is only 600, and your ratings are 2 million, you can be pretty sure that those numbers are pretty close. Not as close as if the sample was 1100, but close.

But...

Most shows in Canada don't do 2 million.

If you have a rating of 180, 000 -- and that sample is only 600, then those numbers could be plus or minus tens of thousands of viewers.

If your ratings are under 100 000, throw a dart. Seriously. It's about as accurate.

Add to this the fact that Canadian stations regularly add together a number of airings of the same program, and report that as, "X people watched this show," and it muddies the water even further. All this because Canadians are used to U.S. style numbers talking about 10, 12 million people watching a show. They don't understand the smaller market and what it means. And I actually kind of support stations not releasing their numbers, because I've seen with U.S. shows how the data is used by people who don't understand it to support some boneheaded point they're making.

And I'm not even talking about bloggers here. I'm talking journalists.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: point is, it's all another symptom of how the whole system's rotten. If you're basing your decisions on numbers and numbers alone, especially in Canada, you're showing a remarkable lack of intestinal fortitude - and you may just be being foolish.

The barn door's open. The cow's gotten out. The sky is falling.

Wheeeeeeee!

DMc on the Ray-dee-Yo: This Time It's Personal

I AM going to be on CBC Radio One again today, on Jian Ghomeshi's Q show, talking about TV season finales.

I think my point of view is: Weddings, meh.

I know. Really original.

I gotta work up some material. Check the local radio listings on CBC.CA to see when Q airs in your market.

EEeeevillll!

I FORGOT to append to my last post that another movie-derived musical opens in Toronto this weekend. EVIL DEAD: THE MUSICAL started right here in Toronto, at the Tranzac Club. It went to NYC, became a sensation, and now it's back. The songs are pretty bad, but that's not the point, is it? If you're in the first three rows -- the "splatter zone" -- you get covered in fake blood.

I ask you, what is not to like?

Read about it here.

I Am Reliably Informed...

THAT THE room we've moved to today is the very same office which used to be the story room for TRADERS. Hart Hanson may have very well sat where I am right now.

I'll take that mojo.

Top Gun: The Musical, And The Photocopy, and the Parody, and the High Horse

SOMETIMES THINGS to write about fall into your lap. Out of the rubble of the great fanfic contretemps of '07 (Still no caps, but yes, they're still coming, and yes, they're still pissed) I wrote a week or so ago about ideas, and how they spookily sometimes seem to be snatched out of the ether by different people at different times -- and how it sometimes happens at the same time, too.

But what about when you're working with "provided materials?" An angry commenter on the original fanfic post apparently doesn't like my high horse. Which is funny, because I happen to have bought a piece of artwork called "The High Horse" from NY illustrator Molly Crabapple. I have to go get that framed.)

Alison, in part, wrote:

while you rant about people not writing original work, you are being paid to use someone else's characters in a world that you did not create, using the rules that they setup in regards to that world. How original can that possibly be?

It isn't. It's professional fanfic. Any writer who writes as a freelancer or on staff of a show that he or she did not create is a fan fic writer.

Though she plays a few rhetorical games in her comment [like insulting the show I worked on in an attempt to insult me...heh heh. Yeah, like that stings. -- go read it if you want the full flavor] Alison raises an interesting and provocative question: (the answer to which she wouldn't get, but we're writing for pros and would be pros here, chickens, aren't we? Yes, we are) How can you claim any originality in work that's based upon something else? And how does that work separate out from... fanfic (shudder)

To an extent I think this is a question that all writers wrestle with. It's wrapped up in the whole, "am I a hack?" question. You can be glib, and talk about there only being seven stories, or everything's stolen from Shakespeare and the Bible... but finding the original idea -- even in a world that's not your own -- is one of those things that separates out the pros from the amateurs. (For the purposes of this post, I'm including any of you spec monkeys who haven't made a sale yet. Because that's how you have to think of yourselves: pros who haven't made a sale. Yet.) It's what separates the writers from the fanfic writers.

Which brings me, Brothers and Sisters, to Top Gun! The Musical.

If you happen to be in Dallas, Texas starting this weekend, you can (and I hope you will) go down to the Dallas Hub Theater, pay your 20 bucks and sit down and watch one of the most fun things I've ever written.

I've written a bit about Top Gun! The Musical before. It came out of a rant about musical theater and how crappy it was that the only properties that rated the musical treatment seemed to be Disney shows and bad movies. (I think it was the Urban Cowboy musical that popped my cork, though I'm sure someone will write in and tell me that the brand new, Legally Blonde musical is "OMG...rilly good!"]

Anyway, in the spring of 2002, I sat down with a great composer and musical director named Scott White, and started banging out songs for TG!TM. We talked about Sondheim, he played me tracks from Company, and we hashed out what we wanted to do, starting from this ridiculous premise: somewhere, a big-budget megamusical based on the 1986 Tom Cruise movie Top Gun, is in rehearsals.

Scott and I decided to go in a few directions fairly early:

We decided we didn't want to tell the whole story of the movie.

This was mainly from me. The more I looked at Top Gun, the more I realized that the plot basically (forgive me, father) ran out of jet fuel at the point Goose died. Top Gun was the first MTV movie, and as such, it was slow and choppy because nobody had gotten that newfangled style down yet. The meta-commentary on the gay subtext of the film was way more interesting that anything that was going on on the screen.

We decided that we wanted to show more of the rehearsal than the movie.

The more we talked, the more we realized that Top Gun was really a metaphor here, a placeholder. The story we wanted to tell, like Chorus Line, was the story of the performers in it, and more than that: the entire idea of the creative process, how fragile it is, and how difficult. We focused quickly around the Director of the piece, who is desperately trying to tell himself that he's doing something artistically worthy (even though the audience knows that's bogus.) From there, we sketched in a few other characters: we had our Director, Billy Palmer, sleeping with the actress playing Charlie (the bitch,) while his long-suffering stage manager, Wendy, carried a torch for him (there's your love triangle.) Then we had some stock characters: the actor playing Maverick was dumb as a post (and insisted on being called "Maverick," at all times,) the actor playing Iceman was "gayer than anything in that Will & Grace show," and Goose...well...we made Goose a chick. We always knew that the heart of the piece was killing Goose, and it seemed to flow better that she was a woman. Also, let's face it, the real Top Gun didn't have much room for women and in a seven person cast we wanted more females. When we clocked the script, we realized that between book and songs, the amount of material that was actually from the musical-within-a-musical clocked in at about 30-35% of the show.

We didn't want to steal.

If Top Gun was a metaphor, and if people recognized the tropes, then, I very quickly decided, there was no need to stamp all over it. We wouldn't be using Danger Zone, or You've Lost That Lovin Feelin. We were going for fair comment, cultural criticism and parody, and we didn't want to be accused of plagiarism. It became very clear to me that there was no need, in fact, to use any dialogue from the movie. Even the situations could be turned around a bit. So in the show-within-a-show bits, we didn't take any lines from the movie. And you know what? It was easy. Because it really was about the experience of the movie more than the movie itself. It was about us, the audience. Trippy, eh?

We snuck in every theater in joke we could think of.

Which meant stuff like, though Goose's character was now female, that change wasn't really reflected in the rewrites, and the actress was suffering through having a non-existent characterization. We made our Charlie a little-bit-past-it actress to deal with neurotic issues, and to humanize her a bit. And we decided that we wanted a larger-than-life producer to enter at about the forty minute mark.

Why?

We wanted to change things up and get subversive.

We wanted the show to be about seventy, eighty minutes so it wouldn't outstay its welcome. And after about forty minutes, we wanted to shake it up -- by then all the in jokes about theater and creativity would be familiar, and everybody would know our characters, what their deal was and where their relationships sat.

Enter The General. The General is one of my favorite ever character creations. His dialogue, when I wrote it, poured out in a torrent, and most of what's in the show is first draft. Whole speeches came unbidden from his lips. The General is an ex-military man who's turned to theatrical producing, and just as you think you know what's going on in the show, he torques it another way. Because the General sees this show not as an artistic piece, and not even as a cash cow: he sees it as an example of American Cultural Imperialism, a way to win the hearts and minds of the world, through Musical Theater.

The General...in short...is batshit insane.

But he's a ton of fun. And then, just as you get his deal -- that this guy sees this show as an instrument of war by other means, we "show him" the 11'oclock number -- "That Goose Is Cooked."

Top Gun! The Musical did extraordinarily well for a modest Fringe musical. It was completely sold out. People scalped tickets. Seriously. We remounted the show the following summer and did well, receiving two Toronto Theatre Award nominations (called Doras) for Dmitry Chepovetsky (who played Maverick) and Best Musical. The cast was stellar and top notch. We took the show to the New York Musical Festival in 2004, and there have been other productions in Halifax, and Houston. We still get inquiries about it all the time, which is how it's going up in Dallas this weekend. (If you want to read an interview of me whoring the show, click here.)

When I went down to Houston to see the U.S. premiere in 2002, it was an important moment for me. Because it was the first time I'd seen something I wrote performed by people who I had had zero contact with. They only worked off the script. Also, the deep heart of Texas is a very different place from Toronto. Would the show play, and would the jokes land?

They did. The differences were intriguing. The General, a part that I saw as a savage indictment of the parts of the American psyche that scared me, was cuddlier down south. That's to be expected, I guess. But all in all, it was ... great. And now it's flying again. Yay!

So what to make of this?

In searching for stuff on the Dallas production of TG!TM, I came across info on a Chicago production which just closed in April 2007. There it is, folks. It's Top Gun, the Musical.

Am I upset? Not even slightly.

Because you can't copyright an idea. And as Alison would be quick to point out, deciding to do a musical based on Top Gun isn't original. The only way, in fact, to mine any originality is to see what you do with it.

Now, in mine and Scott's Top Gun! musical, our thematic targets were really the artistic process, and how do you know you're a hack, and how your dreams for something never quite live up to the reality. And it was also about hope, and longing to be part of something good and not knowing if you measured up. And it was about propaganda, and how culture can be used to sell wars, and all manner of nasty stuff. And it was about gay subtext becoming text. And it was about eighty minutes.

What's intriguing, of course, is that in the five years between TG!TM and this version of the Top Gun musical, the U.S. is in a very different place. We made dark jokes about Iraq that were yet to come true. The kind of jingoistic, TG swagger sits in a different place in the American cultural mindset now. The other thing that changed, of course, is YouTube came along, which allows me to show you this:




Interesting. See, they chose to go with the Danger Zone, interp dance route. Funny, but more of a sketch than our opening number, "We've Got a Plane to Catch." Looks like they made Goose a girl, too...but a girl in drag. Funny. Different way to go.

Poking around, it doesn't look like this Top Gun musical got very good reviews. Some of the commentary seemed to indicate that there was no there there -- that once you got over the initial joke, it wasn't saying anything. Which is exactly the litmus test we put up to our TG musical: it had to say something different than the movie. It had to stand on its own.

And interestingly, that's basically the legal argument as to what constitutes a derivative versus an original work -- how much is you, and how much is the thing that you're parodying or commenting upon? In our case, the heart of the piece is not TG, it's making art, and how difficult that is. And that's what made the difference, I think, in the affections of audiences and critics both.

Of course, both Top Gun musicals rely and are informed by a very funny sequence in an otherwise forgettable movie called Sleep With Me. (And interestingly enough if you believe the scuttlebutt, old Quentin isn't being too original himself here.)



We never did too much more with TG! It's a seven person cast, which is large for a small cabaret style show. It's got swears, and you kind of have to have an 80's sensibility (ie: Top Gun has to have been formative for you) to get it. So the commercial appeal is limited. But the rights are still available, should you want to do it in a theatre near you.

To the cast and crew in Dallas, I say, "Good Luck." Now, back to my high horse.

Idiosyncratic and Wildly Original

TWO WORDS that maybe don't get associated with TV enough. Though you could also argue that people, in their homes and hearths, tired after a long day of doing whatever they have to do to make money, aren't always looking for that, so much as a little comfort. Hmmm.

I'm still adjusting to the new job, so not much from me today, either. Sorry. Luckily, Will Dixon over at his place has just posted a thoughtful little profile of one of the ubergeek writer crushes of the 1990's -- Darin Morgan. He was very idiosyncratic and wildly original -- but at a price.

Eccentric and reclusive, he's oft been described as the Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) of television due to his knack for turning formulaic TV on its ear.

Two out of three ain't bad, but he's also, apparently, notoriously slow.

A self-proclaimed couch potato, Morgan reluctantly joined the staff of The X Files in the third season (via his older brother Glen Morgan) and made a splash over the next two years with four memorable episodes: 'Humbug', 'Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose', 'War of the Coprophages', and 'Jose Chung's From Outer Space' (Final Repose actually won an Emmy).

Then he joined the staff of Millennium for a season, and wrote and directed 'Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense' and 'When Satan Got Behind Me', two of the funniest and cleverest screenplays you'll ever read. These were great TV series scripts, but not necessarily great model scripts for those looking to break into series TV.

Go hang out with Will. If you can, bring brownies. Tell him I said 'Hi.'

Otherwise, if you happen to be reading this from the nation known as Canada, tonight is your chance to finally see the buzz show of the spring. The first show that maybe has had the ambition to take that "Sopranos" crown and dust it off. As John Doyle put it:

In January, when I was in Los Angeles for the midseason TV critics press tour, I had one of those magical moments when all the dross that arrives suddenly seemed irrelevant. I was in my hotel room, typing away at a laptop, trying to make sense of the CBS schedule, or something equally frustrating. The TV was on because new series from the networks and cable channels are shown continuously in the hotel for the critics.

As I wrote, I was vaguely paying attention to the first few minutes of a show I knew nothing about. Then I stopped typing. And then I sat down in front of the TV and watched, entranced. By the end of the program, I was awestruck. I watched the closing scene. Darkness fell on a suburban street, the camera caught a few isolated figures and there was Bob Dylan's voice singing, "In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm./ "Come in," she said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm."

The Riches (Showcase, 10 p.m.) is what I was watching. Made for the Fox cable channel F/X, it came unheralded and as a complete surprise. The opening episode - the one I saw in L.A. and airing here tonight- is astonishingly ambitious, serious, entertaining, funny and moving. It's one of those exercises in TV drama that demolish any suggestion that what's shown on TV is empty-headed nonsense.

We meet a family, the Malloys. It turns out that they are "Travellers," a large, connected clan of grafters and con artists who exist outside normal society, travel the United States in their RVs and sometimes gather together in some remote place to celebrate their own, unique community. They have an elaborate hierarchy and despise those who live normal, settled lives. They don't have social security numbers and the kids are schooled by the clan in thievery and cons.

When we meet the Malloys, dad Wayne (Eddie Izzard) is engaged in an audacious con, which he pulls off with aplomb. Then the mission is to meet mom Dahlia (Minnie Driver) as she is being released from prison. Dahlia looks ravaged by the prison experience. She needs the bosom of the clan and, when things go awry, the Malloys flee.

What happens next is probably the best setup for a series I've seen in years. If you have any pretensions toward writing at all, The Riches' pilot deserves to be closely studied. Showcase, 10pm.

Dane Cook: Serious Actor?

Busy at it, so not much today.

What does it say that I'm actually really, really rooting for him to be good in this? I always like comics who go dark. But a guy who I don't particularly like as a comic -- yet -- I'd love it if this hype paid off.

Is that petty or anti-petty? Or is it Tom Petty? I'm so confused.

From The NYTimes summer movie pullout:

Dane Cook is a successful stand-up comic with a burgeoning film career in pop comedies like "Employee of the Month" and this summer's "Good Luck Chuck" (Aug. 24). There's nothing funny about his work in the offbeat thriller "Mr. Brooks" (June 1). The movie stars Kevin Costner in the title role, a wealthy, upstanding business executive with a secret life as a reluctant, puritanical serial killer, and William Hurt as Mr. Brooks's mysterious alter ego, who eggs him on with chilly glee. Who in his right mind would want to compete against those two? Mr. Cook does, and when he's on screen, you can't look at anyone else.

His character isn't just nasty, he's the apotheosis of vile. A voyeur with a zoom lens, he enjoys taking naughty snaps of a lusty couple in the high-rise across the street who don't believe in closing the curtains. Unexpectedly catching Mr. Brooks in the bloody act of bumping them off, he proceeds to blackmail him, but not for money. What he really wants is to get up close and personal with Mr. Brooks's murders, and demands to be taken along for the thrill.

When he instructs Mr. Brooks to call him Mr. Smith, he looks smug, savoring the pleasure of being able to dominate this dangerous man. But he also radiates an irrepressible adolescent excitement at the prospect of the adventures ahead; it's as if he were seeing himself as Robin to Mr. Brooks's malignant Batman. Mr. Cook makes his character a sort of savage baby, pouty, impulsive, underdeveloped, utterly lacking in moral brakes yet seething with an urge to punish.

The power of the performance lies in Mr. Cook's ability to make his character horrendous but ordinary, even familiar, and thus more appalling: a grandiose, macho nudnik with a raging ego and a hair-raising sense of grievance. Playing off Mr. Costner's cool, meticulous killer, he's a wild mess, arrogantly braying at Mr. Brooks while secretly shooting him anxious glances, freezing in fear at decisive moments, then cackling in borrowed triumph over foul deeds well done.

Reminder: Durham County

TONIGHT, TMN 9pm. Check the time for MOVIE CENTRAL.

On Can-Comedy Shows Generally & Jeff Ltd In Particular: Why These Pretzels Aren't Making Me Thirsty

WILL DIXON came out recently as a Jeff-hater. That's not exactly fair. If you read the post on his site, what it actually says is:

...Jeff Ltd. is a pretty tough watch.

But Mr. Dixon doesn't stop there. He delves a little deeper exploring the inexplicable comparisons some have made to Curb Your Enthusiasm:

You see, Larry David is a little petty and narrow-minded for someone who essentially 'has it all', but in the situations that arise, he generally has good intentions. And so when things blow up in his face...hilarity ensues. On the other hand, Jeff is just so...I dunno, unlikable? He's intentionally smarmy and lecherous and he seriously tries to nail chicks and scam people...and yes, it generally blows up in his face (like a trick cigar, according to the CTV site), but because the blow up is expected, and because he doesn't really have good intentions...the show, Jeff Ltd. is just not that funny. Or if there's hilarity ensuing, it's not for me.

I sure there's a good comedy 'do and don't' rule in here somewhere, but my little scifi/paranormal action adventure pea brain can't seem to articulate it.

Coincidentally, while Dix is suffering the low blood sugar in the explaining-things confidence, he's actually pretty dead on the money. I've been talking with several people I know who write comedy. Some have toiled in the thankless ghetto of stage sketch comedy, and they seem to be consistently frustrated because, in their estimation, there's a few people on the scene who always get laughs who just aren't that funny.

I'm redacting all the names -- but the truth is, the people talked about, indeed, probably aren't the most funny stage comics I've ever seen. But I laughed like a drain when I saw them onstage. Why? Because they had a likable persona that you just wanted to laugh at -- or with. They made you enjoy yourself.

This is a part of comedy that doesn't get talked about a lot -- at least in the circles I run in. But when you look at those shows that stay on the air for years and you don't know why -- likability is a factor. The guy on King of Queens is likable. So is Leah Remini. According to Jim cruised through a bunch of seasons because, for whatever reason, some people found that character redeeming and likable.

This likability factor is not something that always crops up for standups. There are standups out there who have met with great success by essaying an abrasive, obnoxious, or even unlikable comic persona... from Louis Black to Louis C.K. to Mike McDonald... you can definitely get laughs behind the microphone without being someone people like.

But the moment you transition to something character-based, either in sketch or in narrative comedy like TV, likability becomes a factor.

The most successful comics to make that transition from stage to soundstage always have help. Big help. Jerry Seinfeld counted on Larry David. Ray Romano had Phil Rosenthal. I don't know who did the yeoman's work, but though Home Improvement might have been based on the comedy of Tim Allen, I've heard plenty enough stories to know that it's not Tim who you credit for making that show fly.

Comics, like other actors, can sometimes be their own enemy. I was watching the new Larry Sanders boxset a week or so ago and an old ep with Brett Butler came up. And I went, "oh yeah!" I had completely forgotten about Grace Under Fire. There's a show that had incredible promise, which flamed out because the star didn't know what was good for her.

Vide: Roseanne. The Lottery. Seriously.

Comics come from that cutthroat world where any moment they might have to take out a heckler. So they're prickly. They need someone to tune that sensibility for TV.

In the USA, this happens naturally because of the writer/showrunner culture. If you're a comic and you're really great in comedy, well, the hell with you, we're still not letting you have a show without having a showrunner in there. From there it's a delicate walk to glory or disaster. If the show hits, then maybe the balance of power shifts, and maybe there's producer clashes. Or maybe it's a fruitful collaboration that lasts for years.

I bet you anything that there were times when Ray Romano was doing his supposed "breakout" live action film Welcome to Mooseport, where he wished that Everybody Loves Raymond co-creator Phil Rosenthal was around to tell him why his bid to be the next Jimmy Stewart was sucking so hard.

But in Canada, because the writer-showrunner platonic ideal isn't fully recognized (We're working on it, Chester, we're working on it) we very often get comics trying out their own series hands without having anybody else really behind it. They'll give actors shows here, they'll give comics shows. Yes, comedy is in decline everywhere, but in Canada it's in decline for a very specific reason:

The shows aren't funny.

I'll give the standard caveats here: Corner Gas, Trailer Park Boys (where the writers are actually working in deep concert with the onscreen talent.) I have high hopes for the second season of Little Mosque.

And while comics with development deals have trouble making that transition from fearsome commander of the stage to likable living room guy, actors often have the opposite problem.

They assume that they're likable, so anything they do will be likable. I kind of think that's what's going on with Jeff Ltd. I think Jeff Seymour's a really interesting actor. I think the screen likes him. I have no doubt he could be a big hit. But in his eponymous show, he was smarmy and incredibly unlikable. His personal charisma didn't translate. And because he was the producer, the final say, the guy who worked without a writing staff (except for a writing partner) -- only Jeff's judgement ruled. And it resulted in a product that wasn't really very funny at all. It had its moments -- but nothing that pulled you through and kept you watching. It seemed narcissistic, not in a funny, "Larry Sanders" way, but in a creepy "Don't Hassel The Hoff" way.

The other conversation I had with a pro comedy writer the other day comes into play here, too. If Canadian comics, developers, and network people could realize one thing, please, please could it be this:

The cast of Seinfeld were not unlikable.

That's what gets said, constantly. "We want this to be like Seinfeld...or Curb...you know... unlikable."

Which is a desperate misread of the history of that show, and of the entire Larry David sensibility on display in Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The cast of Seinfeld for the first few seasons of that show were VERY LIKABLE. You don't get applause for Kramer's every entrance because people don't like him. Elaine was sassy, and didn't take the boys' guff, George was a lovable loser. Jerry was bemused, sure, and shallow about dating women, but the point was he was the guy who would get dragged to see the baby. He was the guy who would give up the perfect apartment. He would let his friends inconvenience him. He didn't shove Kramer up against a wall when he came into the apartment and raided his stuff.

Yes, it took a while for an audience to find the show, because it was smart. Cheers took a whole season and a half to find an audience, too. But once that bond with the audience was there, it allowed them freedom. Freedom to start pushing the boundaries. Seinfeld pushed them pretty far. To some people, too far. (Including me. When George's fiancee died, I wasn't exactly on the program with George anymore.) But the point is, you can't push those boundaries with someone who you don't care for. If you don't care for the characters, why would you ever return, week after week?

People go back to Dog River because they like the people in Dog River. They want to spend time in that Trailer Park because behind all the swearing and dope smokin, those guys are pretty decent, eh?

This likability is intangible. And you can definitely overdo it. The things that make the characters likable should also make them funny -- so stop sharpening those pencils saying, "we need more heart here," Mr. or Mrs. Network. Giving dramatic scenes to comedy characters will not solve your problem. It will simply take all the air out of the supposed comedy.

Larry David in Curb gets into situations he doesn't want to be in because he's trying to be polite. (Aw, how likable,) but he's cantankerous and doesn't want to put up with the bullshit niceties (funny!) He just can't help himself. You accepted transgressive behavior from the cast of Seinfeld because these things were being done by characters you already liked.

You found them likable because they were funny and you found them funny because they were likable. And that very simple thing is what's missing from so many scripted comedy shows in Canada, be it Jeff Ltd, or...

...well, I'm certainly not going there. As always, YMMV. Think I'm full of it? Have at it below in the comments. And while you're at it, how about listing some more examples of TV comedy characters where what makes them funny also makes them likable?