I don't know how long producer Don McKellar, producer and star Bob Martin and writer and star Matt Watts spent cooking up Michael: Tuesdays & Thursdays (CBC, 9 p.m.), but I wish it had been longer. It's neither bad nor brilliant, and it feels a bit slapdash.
Oh, there's fun to be had with therapy, especially the kind presented here. Watts plays Michael, a 30-year-old man with generalized anxiety disorder. That means he has deep fears about the banal challenges of life. Fear of talking to strangers, fear of heights and fear of vomit. So Michael sees David (Bob Martin), a psychiatrist specializing in cognitive behavioural therapy – every Tuesday and Thursday, for 15 years. He doesn't just let Michael talk about his troubles in the shrink's office. He takes him out into the world and helps him overcome his fears. He also gives him homework, which we see him do.
David finds Michael a fascinating patient. (As do we, the viewers.) But David has another agenda: He wants to write a book about the patient, the treatment and the related adventures and insight. Michael doesn't know that David spends time dealing with publishers and editors trying to get the book up and running. David fancies himself as the next Oliver Sacks.
Comedy ensues with ease from Matt Watts and Michael's social awkwardness. (According to CBC, "They live in Ottawa, a city rife with misunderstandings.") The rhythms of the deadpan dialogue are effortlessly captivating. Michael's phobias and actions are charmingly irrational, but you feel for him too – we've all been beset by irrational reluctances. The show feels frisky in its comedy, not cynical, and there's real skill evident in the comedic twist on therapy. A trip to a shopping mall to help Michael engage in small talk is very funny.
Mind you, what makes the show seem less than finished and what sometimes pulls it down into banality is the group of featured female characters. There's the snippy, bossy publisher lady (Martha Burns). There is the editor (Jennifer Irwin) assigned to the book, a woman who is nerdy and needy and talks way too much about herself and her previous relationship. She just wants to bed David, it seems. David's secretary, Claire (Tommie-Amber Pirie), is incompetent and talks too much. And there is David's ex-wife, Stacia (Melody A. Johnson), who is so cold she won't even look at him when they meet with their lawyers.
Thus, we have a couple of winsome male characters surrounded by fringe female characters, all of whom are ill-defined, but are clearly irritating, cold or incompetent. It's a tad too much, and gives the viewer the uncomfortable feeling that derision of women is at work here. After watching two episodes, it has to be said: If only the male cooks had cooked the show a little longer, then it might have been a bit more substantial and generous in its humour.
Oh, there's oodles of smiles and some viewers will adore it, but the handling of the women characters makes it seem a touch fraudulent.
Also airing tonight
H8R (The CW, E Canada, 9 p.m.) is a reality show that is a work of utter madness. You know how people love to thrash celebrities? Well, on H8R, celebrities meet people who really hate them and try to persuade the haters to like them. On the first episode, Snooki from Jersey Shore goes to the house of some lug who hates her and gives him a piece of her mind. Then she makes dinner for the whole family. What unfolds is goofy and in a casual manner underlines that people who claim to be "real" on reality TV have to spend a lot of time explaining that what happens isn't real. "You're a drunken slob," the lug tells Snooki. "I am not," Snooki says. Then some guy from The Bachelor gets to convince a young lady that he's not a jerk. "She deserves to know," the guy says. Oh, what larks.
Check local listings.