Robin appears on the TVx3 Podcast

Fri, 10 May 2013 23:41:14 +0100

Hey everyone,

I was really pleased to be invited onto the TVx3 Podcast last week to talk comedy. As you know I don't get to podcast about comedy very often so this was a rare chance to talk The Office, Parks and Rec, Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Modern Family and The Middle.

You'll get to hear lots of positivity from me which makes a nice change and I had a great time with hosts Jason (http://www.tvaholic.com/) and Amrie (http://www.mytakeontv.com/).

For all the information go here http://tvtimesthree.com/tvx3-e179-how-the-big-modern-office-community-parks/

Enjoy,
Robin

Girls - Season 2

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 16:39:08 +0000

Girls Season 2

Girls continues to be one of the most watchable shows on television but for unusual reasons. It's constantly breaking with the accepted TV formula that you need to present lovable characters that the audience can get behind. Instead Girls is ruthlessly determined to present Hannah Horvath as a selfish and whiny person regardless of the situation.

Even as she fell deeper into a very sad bout of OCD Hannah was shown trying to manipulate her friends and family rather than being honest. Or in the season's most memorable episode she wanders into an affair with a man recently split from his wife and gets as close to sympathetic as we've ever seen her. She opens up to him about how unhappy some of her wild exploits (in search of the writers life) have made her. And yet somehow we weren't allowed to fully empathise. After all, no one asked her to take cocaine, sleep with an underage boy or agree to an insane e-book schedule.

Hannah's story is very much the centre of the show. Lena Dunham is far more confident in writing for herself and the Hannah character than she is with the rest of the ensemble. Jemima Kirke's pregnancy meant we got little of Jessa but what we did get was confused or extreme. While Marnie was a mess all season. I rarely blame actors for a role sinking because the writing should always be ultimately responsible. However I could never tell what Marnie was really feeling and I don't think Alison Williams helped matters with a flat performance. In season one she seemed like the together, follow-the-rules friend of Hannah's and I suppose this season was meant to show her discovering the uncomfortable realities of life once she was single and not working in a gallery anymore. But for me that character would have been at pains to cover up those feelings and not share them so blatantly with men like Ray or Booth Jonathan. She ends this season back with Charlie in a relationship where surely neither is actually getting what they want.

So much of Girls is a flat, harsh emotion. I know a lot of that is deliberate and there are times when it feels gloriously honest along with others when its horribly contrived. To see Marnie singing Kanye's "Stronger" felt like something no one with half a brain would ever think was a good idea and so it moved from the discomfort of a bad performance to the discomfort of bad television.

The moments where that honesty met a more understandable TV-style presentation usually centred around Shoshanna or Adam. Both are exaggerations but ones which hit emotional notes that provide important relief from the gloom of Hannah's calamities. As Adam confessed his loneliness to an AA meeting and nervously went on a date you could almost see a sit com built around his earnest brand of awkwardness. While Shoshanna repeatedly had me laughing including the dead perfect question of "What happens if you leave the door?" after she began making out with a cute doorman.

I don't want Girls to change to give us more of one thing or another. I think it's a fascinating blend of social satire, light comedy and dark psychoanalysis. I do think clearer writing and casting choices could be made though (Chris O'Dowd as Thomas-John was terrible).

If I had more time I'd love to write more but if you haven't seen Girls, do check it out. It's unlike anything else on television.

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Robin appears on the TVx3 Podcast

Girls - Season 2