By MACK ROSENBERG
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
(Photo courtesy of Movieposterdb)
Ever wonder what it would be like if HBO decided to run a comedy series about the adventures of single men? You know, a sitcom that would probably run on network TV for a few months and then get cancelled? Well, HBO has just this in its newest comedy series, “Hello Ladies.”
The show follows the life of Stuart, an eligible Englishman living in Los Angeles, and the various women and friends he comes into contact with. Unfortunately, the pilot episode struck me in a way that most sitcoms since the end of “Friends” have: Simply put, it just was not funny enough.
There were parts of the pilot episode that made me laugh. One of the main themes of “Hello Ladies” is Stuart’s (Stephen Merchant) hell-bent determination to portray a quality self-image and, in the process, to hopefully impress women with his charms. The catch is he is British; already, he just seems so out of place. A British guy struggling to impress women is always going to be funnier than an American because of the accent. Really, anything is funnier with a British accent. His punch line, when approaching a group of women, is, not surprisingly, “Hello Ladies.” It’s easy to laugh at him, not with him. As we see in the pilot episode, he tries so much harder than any of his friends to get women – this includes his best friend Wade, a recent divorcee of what he thought was a successful marriage.
In fact, not only is Stuart trying too hard to impress women, he’s trying too hard to be funny, and in the pilot episode, Merchant’s character did not make me laugh. In the episode, Wade (Nate Torrance) is down in the dumps because his wife left him. With the couple’s would-be 11-year anniversary looming, Stuart decides to take Wade out to a party. What Wade doesn’t know is that Stuart has plans to abandon his friend and mingle with a young lady named Courtney, who is a friend of Stuart’s tenant, Jessica (Christine Woods) Earlier in the episode, Stuart awkwardly hit on Courtney when she and Jessica were working on Jessica’s web series in Stuart’s house.
Stuart’s goal to end up with Courtney by the end of the night, and he basically goes to the end of the world and back to try to make it happen. This results in Stuart falling over a coffee table full of drinks in front of everyone at the club. The moment was supposed to make me laugh, but it just made me think of how much of a dunce the guy is.
The pilot episode did, however, have its share of comical moments. Stuart, aside from his womanizing personality, is noticeably cheap. There were a couple of one-liners about making sure to pay him back that gave me a chuckle. I like that the show’s creators gave him this random quality that doesn’t seem to go with the rest of his persona. Here is a guy willing to do whatever it takes just to have a girl remember his name, reminding his friends that he will only pay for bowling and not dinner.
“Hello Ladies” airs at 10:30 p.m. Sunday night on HBO and archived episodes are on HBOGo.com
