Wednesday, January 10, 2007

A Rolling Stone Gathers No...Mosque

"groan"

The pilot for "Little Mosque On The Prairie" aired last night....glad that's over with. And I'm sure the producers and and writers and cast probably feel the same way. The hype and attention the show was receiving was bound to put a ton of pressure on everyone involved...now, hopefully, they can learn from viewer feedback and get down to just making the show...and making it a little bit better.

And that's not saying it was bad...it was just, you know, the first show...the setup show...say it, the pilot. Go back and watch the pilot from just about any comedy series that you enjoyed and most will generally be pretty weak. Or average. Or safe. Or at least what you expect to see before a show finds itself and discovers who and what works and what doesn't.

Rory Boylen in TV Guide Magazine gave it an 'acceptable' review, and I tend to agree with most of what he said...

Where a show such as The Office makes you feel for characters and laugh at their downfalls, Little Mosque happily rolled the story along to a feel-good ending. So good, in fact, that the most accepting of the Muslim community turns out to
be, ironically, the Reverend!
Don’t get me wrong, Little Mosque deserves credit for bringing out this type of show in this day and age. There were times when you had to release a little chuckle, but overall it wasn't the laugh-out-loud comedy that would turn heads. It was, as my mom described, “precious.”
Maybe the hype and attention raised expectations too high for its own good. But as far as I’m concerned, one show about ignorant country bumpkins in the prairies is enough for Canadian TV.

Hopefully Mosque will not rely solely on its 'hook', quickly use up all their play on words like Jihad and Allah, and focus on good quirky character comedy (with a Muslim spin of course) that isn't just a slightly different shade of 'Corner Gas'. But it's still real early in the game...

And who knows, maybe down the road Mick Jagger could take a vacation from 'Knights Of Prosperity' and pay Mercy a visit before heading over to Dog River for a crossover episode event to cap this years Canuck tv season.

Or not.

1 comment:

ME said...

Hey, you got blog spam again.

I didn't think it was as bad as you. I think it's little light shone with promise. It wasn't nearly perfect, I might have cast a couple of the roles differently, and I worry they've burned their Jihad humour out too quickly, but it was solidly OK. Way better than Rumours. Or Jozi H, all which cost more money. I like what it's trying to do. And I am going to support it, gosh darn it.