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| TV,
Jerry Carpenter,
20 January 1999 |
Rating: F4
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By the time you read this the programmers have probably dropped it – the Beeb handles this show like the mad uncle locked in the attic, released only at night to roam late night schedules then bam ! – slammed back in the cooler when you’ve just grown to like him. It was one of America’s highest rated shows for at least five years, but when it’s on here it’s barely trailered.
Those of you who followed Jerry & Co through to the final hour long special on Sky will be charmed to see BBC 2 way back in the Cretazoic period of the whining neurotic New Yorkers. George has just got engaged to Susan, and enjoying it like he’s stepped in shit. Elaine seems to between jobs, Kramer is still the doofus grown up version of Grange Hill’s Gonch, with his hands in a different scheme each week, and Jerry’s still going through the moves with an inexhaustible supply of twenty-somethings. Seinfeld’s sex-life stretches incredulity further than Shatner’s stunt scenes in TJ Hooker, but this a show powered by the sheer absurdity of it’s farcical set ups, as well as brilliantly constructed ironic pay-offs.
A lot of first time viewers drawn to this show by the critical plaudits are alienated by the sometimes overcooked characterisations (Costanza’s mother is TV’s shrillest performer since Bonnie Langford), and taken the wrong way all the whininess can seem irritating. I did myself but I’m glad I stuck with it – in the long term this is still the smartest wittiest comedy on TV, which unlike it’s other high-rated peers Frasier and Friends never stoops to sentimentality or boorish schmaltz.
THIS JUST IN !!! – BBC controllers in atonement shock ! – I’ve checked the Guide and it’s true – Seiny every night mon-fri for a whole weekÂ
christ -I might even pay my licence fee now.
BBC2 Weekdays 24.00 BST
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