Every once in a while, a television show comes along that is so very, very bad it defies belief.
Dr Ken, starring Ken Jeong from The Hangover, is all that and more.
Dr Ken begins next Wednesday, and this is an early warning to stay very far away from TV2 at 7.30pm on that day.
I don't mean you shouldn't watch some of the very good shows on TV2, just, please, not this one.
Ken Jeong was funny in The Hangover trilogy as the quite criminal, but amusingly wacky Leslie Chow.
But he has made a terrible mistake creating, writing and being executive producer of Dr Ken.
The show is based on his experiences in the medical area - he is apparently a licensed physician in California.
He perhaps experienced something like the episode that starts Dr Ken, where a man comes in for a certain sort of examination, and tells Dr Ken "I looked it up online and it's haemorrhoids'' (lots of canned laughter).
"Hmmm,'' says Dr Ken, "That's your diagnosis? Who should we listen to, the doctor, or the guy with the inflamed . . . and the internet connection?''
(lots of canned laughter).
Funny?
No.
Awful?
Yes.
Dr Ken gets no better, and it's a wonder such appalling rubbish can get through whatever system is in place to allow or disallow television shows.
Meanwhile, a couple of shows have crept up, been excellent and finished, meaning once I tell you about them you will have to search for them on some sort of content provider.
Blunt Talk has ended on Sky's SoHo, after running over the holiday period.
It stars the ever-wonderful Patrick Stewart, was written by the very good Jonathan Ames (who created the brilliant Bored to Death with Ted Danson, which you should totally watch) and produced by Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane.
It received mixed reviews, but any bad reviews in that mix are completely wrong.
The show that follows the pleasingly insane goings-on in the life of Stewart as British newscaster Walter Blunt, a former Falklands War hero who moves to Los Angeles with the intention of conquering American nightly cable news, is extremely funny, occasionally moving, and generally full of excellently amusing tales of sex, drugs, psychiatry, dementia and television news.
I highly recommend it.
Also finishing on SoHo and well worth finding (and paying for legally, of course) is series two of Catastrophe.
Sharon Horgan as Sharon Morris and Rob Delaney as Rob Norris continue their difficult, sometimes angry but always funny relationship, are now parents to two children, and negotiate alcoholism, differing sexual agendas, and a cast of bizarre and difficult family and friends.
Top shelf.
- Charles Loughrey
