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Family Guy and American Dad creator Seth Macfarlane is said to be one of the hardest working people on TV. However, judging from his new co-creation, a spin-off featuring Family Guy’s droning African-American neighbour Cleveland, it’s fair to assume that many people will think that he’s simply not working hard enough.
The Cleveland Show centres around Cleveland Brown, a former recurring character from Family Guy, making a new life for himself with new friends and family after moving back to his hometown. The first episode sees him and his 14 year-old son Cleveland Jr., the show’s token obese simpleton, move from Spooner Street in Quahog to Stoolbend, Virginia where he rekindles a romance with his high school sweetheart, Donna Tubbs. From there he has to gain the respect of her children; typical rebellious teenager Roberta who just wants her independence, and troublemaking toddler Rallo, a humourous rehash of Stewie only with more cool. Along the way he makes friends with a trailer-trash redneck, a wannabe bigshot who still lives with his mother and a talking Christian bear who obviously serves as the usual anthropomorphic non-human of the show (à la Brian in Family Guy or Roger and Klaus in American Dad).
I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me you didn’t expect much from this show. All in all you would have been right not to. The Cleveland Show falls short of being good by blandly messing around with a watered-down version of the Family Guy joke-formula, failing to provide audiences with sufficient reasons for laughter or for even giving a damn. Co-creator and voice of Cleveland, Mike Henry (also the voice for Herbert the paedophile amongst others in Family Guy) may be a hysterically funny guy, as are the rest of the cast, but it’s overshadowed by the many number of times where the jokes miss their mark and where all attempts at wit fall frustratingly flat. There may be little hope but nevertheless, time may tell a more favourable story for the programme if those behind it manage to tighten what they have and trim away a lot of the burning debris. For a show that’s just starting, it’s trying too hard to cover all of its bases with a wide selection of characters who at the end of the day don’t make an impact or come off as that interesting (except perhaps Rallo, also voiced by Mike Henry, and Tim the bear, voiced by Seth Macfarlane).
To be honest, it’s not a great show at all. It’s going to struggle to find its way and it might not get picked up for another season but nevertheless if you’re a relaxed fan of Family Guy, you won’t always feel cheated of your time when you watch this. However if you find yourself absolutely loathing this show and you’re a real Cleveland fan then fear not: the word on the street is that he’ll be returning to Spooner Street every now and again to see his old friends. Sweet.
Want to see it for yourself? The Cleveland Show is on Mondays at 10pm on E4.
If you missed the first two episodes, catch them on 4OD.
I agree. The show does essentially seem to be a "black Family Guy", but not as funny. I'm not a fan of American Dad either, but at least that show has a different format.
I'd hardly call Seth's output original in it's format. Same cliche characters, different setting. That's all there is to it. With the Cleveland show he can't even pretend he's doing anything different anymore.
I did an internet quiz the other week in which the question was "popular cartoon set around a family with three children and a dog" and was surprised when the answer wasn't Simpsons. Turns out it was Family Guy. American Dad isn't dissimilar (except instead of being an average lower-middle-class family it's an average upper-middle-class family) and the Cleveland Show is again the same. The only mould-breaker is Futurama, which retains the comedic value (and maybe even improves on it) without being identical to the others...
Having loved the four I mentioned for a long time, I was expecting to like the Cleveland Show a bit - but it's just not funny. That makes me sad :(
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