The New HBO Lineup Still Rocks

. These shows all just prove once again how innovative and groundbreaking HBO continues to be. Not that they need much to stand out in the crowded mediocrity of today’s television programming.
Here’s a breakdown of the new shows on HBO.

The Ricky Gervais Show airs on Fridays at 9pm on HBO and features the voices of Gervais, collaborator Stephen Merchant and their personal whipping post, Karl Pilkington. The beginning narrative of the show is fairly concise. To paraphrase, the narrator begins “A while back, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington sat down to record a series of pointless conversations. This is the result.” The merciless wit of both Merchant and Gervais is in full swing within the first minute, but it sometimes gives way to the childhood mentality of bullying. If that’s you’re style, then you’ll definitely love this show. The animated show is somewhat of an afterthought; though well animated, it’s a rehash of the Gervais/Merchant/Pilkington podcasts that is the most downloaded podcast series of all time.
Grade: B

Airing new episodes on Fridays at 9:30pm,The Life and Times of Tim is one of the standouts in the lineup. It features quirky flash animation graphics complete with post-hipster attitude. The show tackles some pretty normal ideas, like girlfriend trouble, heading to Atlantic City for a day of debauchery, and the trials and tribulations of having a beard. Perhaps it’s because I can relate to the subjects so closely that it is as funny as I think it is. Either way it gets an A.

How to Make it in America is more drama than comedy, but it gets you hooked like the first season of Entourage did. You have the sense that the characters are based loosely on the writer’s real life; or at least an extrapolation of it. The writing is tight and the actors seem to find their characters very well. Kid Cudi makes a cameo as a smooth-talking friend of the two main characters and is perfect for the part. It mixes fashion and real life well; I never thought I would find a show that revels in fashion as interesting as I do with How to Make it in America. Based on the first two episodes, I give this show a B+. New episodes air on Sundays at 10pm.

There’s a reason Funny or Die airs new episodes on Friday nights at midnight. It’s the least successfully funny of the new lineup, with longwinded intros and all-around weirdness played throughout each 30 minute episode. Don’t get me wrong, this show could make some serious waves if they show some of the stronger content from the Funny Or Die website later in the season. But to watch it on HBO is somewhat superfluous. The short length of each segment lends itself to the nature of surfing the internet, which is one of the reasons that the website is so great. But to be bombarded with the weirdness while lying on the couch just doesn’t sit right with me. In one segment in the second episode, two men dressed in Uncle Sam and Abe Lincoln costumes beat up and kill a man for making fun of them. Huh? Later, the same gag is used when they kill two men with boa constrictors fashionably wrapped around their necks. Rob Riggle makes an excellent cameo as a friend who needs a designated driver in the first episode. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t. For that, it gets a current Grade of C+.

For laugh-til-you-pee Funny or Die content, check out Zach Galifianakis’ Between Two Ferns