With the Writers Guild of America entering its fourth week on strike and no new episodes remaining of most scripted shows, networks are pulling out the big guns—namely, a bowtie clad Tucker Carlson. He’ll be the host of a new game show about trusting complete strangers to win cash. If that isn’t depressing enough, there’s no shortage of horrible ideas for unscripted shows to fill in the slots usually taken by 30 Rock or The Late Show: “My Dad Is Better Than Your Dad,” “Baby Borrowers,” and “When Woman Rule the World” (what, we don’t already?). To help cope with the onslaught of mediocrity that will rule the airwaves until the writers and networks get a contract signed, here’s some TV-on-DVD you may not have heard of:
The Vicar of Dibley
If you miss The Office and want a fix of British-inspired comedy, give this BBC series a try. It hasn’t yet translated to American television—shocking, considering the market for dry humor about trai-–lblazing female pastors in the countryside—but it was wildly successful in the UK. The elders of a local church await a new leader after their pastor passes away in the middle of mass but are shocked when a woman, Gerry Granger, shows up, less “bloke with a Bible and bad breath,” more “babe with a bobcat and a magnificent bosom.” It’s well done and unendingly funny, as the villagers of Dibley deal with the situation: “Things have to change—look at traffic lights. What if they didn’t change, there’d be terrible congestion, wouldn’t there?” Plus, Johnny Depp and Kylie Minogue make cameos.
Rick & Steve
Avenue Q is to Sesame Street what Rick & Steve is to Bob the Builder. A new series from Canada’s Logo Network, they’re “the happiest gay couple in all the world,” living in a shiny, colorful, stop-motion little town. Some of the writers of Avenue Q also create lyrics for this puppets-gone-wild show, and it’s when they start singing that you realize you’re not on Nickelodeon anymore. Rick and Steve are envied by their friends for having the perfect relationship, but trouble arises in “Guess Who’s Coming for Quiche” when Steve voices his desire to try a three-way. After a few failed attempts, they break out in the show-stopping “We want to be like him and him and him/ or her and her and her/ or him and her and him.” The opening shot warns that Rick & Steve “does not represent the opinions of the entire LGBT puppet community … yet,” but it does seem to represent happy relationships of all kinds and puppet humor everywhere. The first season is out on DVD.
Wonderfalls
Jaye seems to be living a normal life as a Brown graduate with a degree in Philosophy, working as a clerk in a Niagra Falls gift shop who loses an assistant manager position to a “mouth-breather who’s still in high school.” She spends her days selling movies about Native American myths to middle school kids, like one about a princess going over the Falls: “‘I surrender to destiny’—her famous last words. Seriously. They put it on bathrobes and stuff.” And that’s when the inanimate objects start to talk to her. All of a sudden, gift shop tchotchkes and bookends start telling Jaye what to do, setting off an oddly suspenseful and hilarious chain of events where she ends up helping her friends and random strangers fix their lives. She knows she’s crazy, but the things will start singing “100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” if she doesn’t listen. Unfortunately, Wonderfalls went the way of Arrested Development after only a few episodes, as Fox just didn’t get how funny it was, but the entire series is available on DVD.
