Yesterday, I pointed out that in many American prime-time sitcoms, some palooka is married to a woman who looks like a fashion model. This is kind of phony. Today I have news on that front -- a new sitcom starts tonight that has been pithily described by no less an authority than The Wall Street Journal as, "a feel-good drama for fatties."
Less Than Perfect (ABC, CTV, 9:30 p.m.) is not a drama, it's a sitcom and part of a long-established genre in American TV. It set in the world of television itself and portrays a news anchor as a vain, shallow fool. The people around him are sycophants who preen about their status in the fabulous world of TV.
The twist here is that Claudia (Sara Rue), a lowly administrative assistant from the boring side of the TV business -- where they process the paycheques and keep the printers supplied with paper -- gets a job working for the anchorman and is a success. The extra twist is that she is what American reviewers have called "plus-size." Her new co-workers despise her because of her body size and frumpy clothes. Secretly, her new boss (anchor Will Butler, played as a vain buffoon by Eric Roberts) adores her because she's efficient and makes excellent cookies.
There is something extremely weird about Less Than Perfect. Okay, I get the idea that Claudia isn't a stick figure, but she's hardly a really big woman. Every few minutes, there's some idiotic joke about food. Eating is a secret vice on this show.
The only people who admit to eating and to enjoying food are the nobodies from the boring departments at the TV network. The others -- the skinny, successful ones -- eat in secret behind closed doors.
Here's the thing -- I'm not sure if this angst about food is being mocked. I think it's taken as the normal behaviour of successful people. The nobodies have been foiled in their aspirations because they eat homemade cookies and stuff from the vending machines. It's not a joke -- this show gravely accepts the fact that successful people don't eat in public and hardly ever eat in private.
In fact, I was reminded of a passage in Toby Young's book How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (about the author going to New York and failing to make it in the glossy magazine racket), in which Young notices something interesting after attending the Academy Awards. He doesn't see anybody eating at the post-awards parties, but later, he sees limos lined up at the drive-through windows at fast-food restaurants.
And then there's the matter of Claudia's clothes. Her dress appears to be from the props department of The Beverly Hillbillies in 1962. She looks like she's from the backwoods of Tennessee and is about to play the spoons. In fact, she's presented as a freak.
Less Than Perfect's just staggeringly weird. It doesn't appear to have a point, apart from celebrating Claudia's promotion from obscurity to a plum job working for the news anchor. Although it is mainly set in a TV newsroom, nobody talks about the news. Claudia writes a "news summary" for her boss but we never know what's in it. Throughout, she's shadowed by her two sidekicks, Ramona (Sherri Shepherd) and Owen (Andy Dick). Ramona is your typical blustering, sarcastic big woman. Andy Dick plays Owen as he did his role as the office flake on News Radio -- he's outrageously camp, but nobody ever comments on this.
At the end, there's a sort of musical number, in which the nobodies from the bowels of the building invade the top floor where the sleek TV-news people work. It looks like the writers ran out of ideas, but they'd obviously run out of those before they started writing this bizarre show. Heroines (Newsworld, 10 p.m. on The Passionate Eye) is also about appearance and perception, but it's meant to be art, not entertainment. And there's the rub. Heroines (which also aired a few months age on Bravo!) is about photographer Lincoln Clarkes and his eerily beautiful photos of female junkies in Vancouver. Clarkes has been taking these gorgeous photos of junkies for years and, while he says he'd provoking the audience to see the beauty in people who are dismissed as the detritus of society, his critics say he's exploiting them.
In The Passionate Eye slot, we usually get conventional documentaries about specific issues. However, Heroines isn't really about Lincoln Clarkes and his work -- it's an extension of his photographs. The stories that emerge -- especially that of Meagan, a junkie he photographs often -- are appalling. Make up your mind about whether Heroines is art, exploitation or social commentary. Open Mike With Mike Bullard (Comedy, 7 p.m., CTV, 12:05 a.m.) returns tonight. The guests are Dave Foley, Lloyd Robertson and Jann Arden. In the world of Canadian TV, there is nothing quite as weird as watching Bullard josh with Lloyd Robertson. Bullard adopts the attitude of a kid pushing his luck with the teacher and Robertson looks like he's figuring out just when he's going to tell the kid he's expelled. I have no idea why Bullard's show now airs at 7 p.m. on Comedy. Some things are entirely beyond me. Dates and times may vary across the country. Please check local listings or visit