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$#*! My Dad Says left me with one main thought: what’s on the other side? Now, it took all of 5 seconds for me to laugh at the Twitter account on which this series on 5* is based while the television show took twenty minutes to raise a vague smile, with the first half producing no laughter or amusement whatsoever as it’s built around a series of one-liners. Like a lot of these things, when you put the context back in they lose part of their appeal.
However, I believe in always finding something to praise. And, to be fair, there were a few moments when the characters appeared to be more than caricatures of stereotypes. The moment with the record player was touching, but given that this character was supposed to be a miserable old man it was difficult to believe him dancing romantically with his son. Especially as he then immediately went back to threatening to shoot people.
Probably the weirdest thing was the setting. A lot of the characters seemed pretty pale considering it is supposed to be set in America’s deserts, indeed the father is the only character who looks like he’s in the sun a lot; the others all look rather pasty. The central premise of the first episode is that the son wants to borrow money off his father and he has to find a way to ask, whilst the father is trying to keep his driving licence. This is a reasonable premise, but there is very little comedy gained from it; even that stalwart of American comedy, the DMV, doesn’t provide much laughter.
In terms of set design and casting, well, there are good things. The majority of the characters are believable, although some of the one-liners were really more offensive than amusing and the father doesn’t really look old enough to just dismiss it as an old man being an old man. There is something weird about the set. It’s immaculate, despite the fact the father is supposed to be an outdoors-type that grows vegetables and fights animals, and there’s no sign of it. There are copper pans for ornament stored next to tools, which is just beyond me; I can’t imagine why the character would have ornaments for starters. And is there a bigger put-off than recorded laughter? If a show is funny it doesn’t need it; if it does, it needs a lot more than just that.
This was a good idea for a show, but the fact is, it doesn’t work. The script is flimsy, it’s obviously trying to avoid the one-liners being too prominent, which does no good whatsoever. A heavy overhaul could make it into a good show, but when a programme’s title is censored it flags up that a lot was removed that made it funny, and here too little was added to the tweets to make it work. Would I watch it again? I’ll watch one more episode to see if it gets better. I don’t have much hope though.
$#*! My Dad Says airs on Tuesday at 10.30pm on 5*
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