Long Story Short is a Netflix adult animated comedy-drama created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg, his first new animated series since the acclaimed BoJack Horseman. Trading Hollywood satire for something more intimate, the show is a warm, melancholy, and very funny portrait of a single family told across the sweep of its members' entire lives.
The series follows the Schwooper family, jumping freely and non-chronologically through the decades, from childhood and adolescence to marriage, parenthood, and old age, so that a character might be a squabbling kid in one scene and a weary adult in the next. This restless time-hopping structure lets the show explore how families carry their history with them, how old wounds and inside jokes echo across generations, and how small moments accumulate into a life. Its voice cast includes Abbi Jacobson, Ben Feldman, Lisa Edelstein, Paul Reiser, and Nicole Byer.
Rooted in Bob-Waksberg's own Jewish American upbringing, Long Story Short earned strong reviews for balancing sharp comedy with genuine emotional depth, the same alchemy that made his previous work resonate. It is streaming on Netflix.
Premiered on September 25, 2012, Ben and Kate is adorable FOX-produced situation comedy, has immediately got lots of positive critic reviews. There are lots of reasons for this, and one of them is a brilliant ensemble cast. Not in the sense of presence of some top-paid actors in the series, but in the sense of amazing chemistry between the leading roles actress and actor: Dakota Johnson and Nat Faxon. They play adult brother and sister, how has grown up in totally different characters with lots of opposite traits. Kate (played by Dakota Johnson) is a lone mother, who is raising a daughter, trying to make ends meet by working hard as bar manager, while Ben (Nat Faxon) on his turn has had no special purpose in his life and just remained a child. The show begins when Ben decides that her sister lives a very uneasy life and decides to help her by moving in to her flat. All the Ben and Kate plot is build upon a laughable situations that arise in numerous quantity around their almost-as family life. Ben is trying hard, giving her sister lots of advices on how to establish strong relationship with men from a very first date, while Kate endeavors to familiarize his brother with a real adult life.
Nominated as "Best Situation Comedy" in 2010, The Inbetweeners depicts life of Will McKenzie and three of his friends Simon Cooper, Jay Cartwright and Neil Sutherland while they are attending the fictional Rudge Park Comprehensive School. The main character, Will narrates the intros and conclusions of each episode, and all the TV show action is concentrated mostly on his personality. When his parents were divorced, Will was transferred from expensive private school to comprehensive one. The new environment looked very hostile for him at the first time. However, he managed to befriend with the "gang": Simon, Jay and Nail very soon after his first day at the new school. Meanwhile, they formed some kind of "alliance" of "uncool" persons, as they share many similar traits and behavior clichés: each of them was suffering some bullying and failing the attempts to have sex with girls. The series has gained lots of positive reviews and even has been voted as "Best New British TV Sitcom 2008". The success of The Inbetweeners was repeated by The Inbetweeners movie filmed in 2011 and directed by Ben Palmer, while the screenplay was totally written by TV show creators - Damon Beesley and Iain Morris.
It seems like it was a wise business decision for FX to pick up Charlie Sean, who was recently fired from Two and a Half Man and put him in to a new environment of three-camera heavy-laugh-tracked sitcom about a former baseball player, Charlie Goodson, struggling to find a balance in his new life trough the anger management therapy courses. So, Charlie Sean's comeback to TV called Anger Management is new is a new promising round of career and, in case of success, a high-ROI business move for FX "“ mostly because of low-level costs of creation of such a sitcom. The plot of Anger Management is simple, and reminds us Californication: Charlie Goodson is divorced middle-age man who tries to keep formally good relationships with his ex-wife Jennifer (Shawnee Smith who may be familiar to you as Amanda from Saw franchise) and their OSD issues suffering daughter Sam (Awake TV show starlet Daniela Bobadilla) while being in Friends-With-Benefits-like sexual relations with his therapist Kate (Selma Blair, some people may know her as Abigail from released in 2012 Columbus Circle and Mary from the same year Replicas). Despite the bold sexual background of Anger Management, this TV show is only on FX without TV-MA rating. Who would have thought that Charlie Sean's new series will be such a content-safe?
The next big thing in ABC family repertoire, a parenting comedy Baby Daddy, from the very first episode looks like Rising Hope and Three men and a Baby, mixed and stirred. If you are 18-34 years old women your chances to find this comedy entertaining are very high. Otherwise, if you are not belong to this target audience, we recommend you to not waste your time. Although the baby-girl (Emma) in Baby Daddy is very cute, this doubtfully compensates the flatness of acting and primitiveness of hijinks, all of them are revolving about unexpected pregnancy and baby's bodily functions. The background of the story is getting us from the very first episode. An aimless dude, Ben with his friend Tucker finds an infant at doorsteps of their small apartment which they share with Tucker's hockey-player brother Danny. The baby comes with the short note form Ben's former one-night-stand girlfriend. Ben decides to take a care of the child, hoping that his friends, Tucker and Danny alongside with his overbearing mother Bonnie (Melissa Peterman) and his school-friend Riley (Chelsea Kane) will help him with parenting functions. The main storyline is shadowed in some funny way by undercover intrigues taking a place between friends: Riley has a crush on Ben since the school-times, and Danny seems to be on the opposite apex of this love triangle.
One of the funniest talk shows released in 2012, Comedy Bang! Bang! owes its success a long history of weekly comedy audio podcast, which began in 2009 and was originated from Comedy Death-Ray stage talk show performed at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Hollywood. The person which is standing behind this success is an American writer and comedian Scott Aukerman, who started in 1990s in HBO's sketch comedy Mr. Show with Bob and David. Apperently, te seeds of great headway were laid in the fertile ground in these fabulous times and now we have one of the must-watched comedy shows on IFC which gone far away in success from its pursuer Bunk, which seems to be much less entertaining though has lots similar of similarities with Comedy Bang! Bang! Nevertheless Scott Aukerman continues to amuse the audience with uncommon tricks like strange persons falling out from the blue and talking to host and his guest before going nowhere. Aukerman's guests deserves some special attention: at the first look they are common Hollywood celebrities, like Amy Poehler or Zach Galifianakis but something in the way the host introduces them and is talking to them makes whole performance incredibly ludicrous. That's maybe a secret of a true master comedian.
If you have missed a chance to be hooked up with Gilmore Gilrs, the new ABC's dramedy Bunheads is exactly what you need. The first episode of Bunheads has left such a feeling that if there were a little bit more of GG-like moments in Bunheads, the CW lawyers would inevitably file the suit against ABC. And that is not surprisingly taking into consideration the fact that the TV show was created by the same Amy Sherman-Palladino who created splendid Gilmore Gilrs. It is felt throughout the sharp dialogs, giddy repartees, deeply portrayed personalities and perfectly constructed dance scenes. The astonishing dancing ingredient of the Bunheads, is of course not only the personal merit of Sherman-Palladino, but Sutton Foster and Kelly Bishop. Both of them have quite serious dancing background. Another Sutton's and Kelly's merit is drollery atmosphere which these two awesome women create around themselves. Kelly plays Fanny Flowers, a small town dance studio owner, while Sutton portrays Michelle Simms, a cute dancer being caught in the lower point of the career, when series of questionable decisions had led her out of Las Vegas dancing scenes to small rural town Paradise, California where she met Fanny. There are more pry personalities in the series like talented and perfectly shaped Sasha (Julia Goldani Telles) and purposeful Bettina, aka Boo (Kaitlyn Jenkins). All the characters feature inexpressible chemistry between each other, and the spirit of the show is sweet, pleasurable and cuddlesome.
Those who ever watched Idioracy (2006) are aware of the future of television and the appearance of IFC's Bunk will not be in surprise for them. Rest of the people should know this kind of comedy reality series will be dominating till times when everyone would think it's normal to invent a new family-friendly look of David's genital on Michelangelo's masterpiece. Yes it was one of the idiotic contest of second episode of Bunk where two "professional" "comedians" (it's not a coincidence nor mistype that two of words are quoted) fight for ambiguous prizes like "Super Powers", "Universal Alibi" etc. performing silly tasks like "to shame a baby". The series was produced by Kurt Braunohler, an American comedian which is known to us by his roles in Delocated, The Heart, She Holler, Comedy at the Fringe, Jon Benjamin Has a Van and Comedy Lab.
