• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, May 15, 2017

ABC has a comedy series premiering this week about a talking dog.

The talking dog is the star of the show -- the very dog referenced in the title, “Downward Dog.”

It is easy, if not instinctual, to react skeptically from the get-go to a network comedy series centered on a talking animal. 

However, when you stop and think about it, one of TV's most beloved shows was about a talking horse, “Mr. Ed.”

Much less remembered was the 1983 NBC series about a talking orangutan named Mr. Smith. That show, titled “Mr. Smith,” resulted from a brief mini-craze for orangutans stemming from the Clint Eastwood orangutan movies that came out a few years previously, “Every Which Way But Loose” and “Any Which Way You Can.”

The fact that no less a personality than Clint Eastwood would agree to co-star in two movies with an orangutan (or more than one, if memory serves) may have helped the actors in “Downward Dog” to say yes to co-starring with a dog in this prime-time sitcom on ABC.

In fact, co-starring might be too strong a word here. Clearly, the star of this show is the dog. In the show, his name is Martin. His owner is a young woman who is a creative director in an advertising agency in Pittsburgh. Martin is played by a dog named Ned (that’s him pictured in the photo above).

This dog's performance, in which he plays a dog that possesses an active and verbose inner life, is uncanny. You really believe that Ned is Martin. His performance is so awesome that his human co-stars run the risk of not even having their names mentioned in reviews about the show.

The human actors play the aforementioned owner of Martin -- a woman named Nan -- plus her various friends and work colleagues. 

But getting back to this dog, in “Downward Dog,” we experience life from Martin's point of view as he maintains a running commentary in the voice of an earnest and self-obsessed slacker Millennial.

I am assuming this tone of voice is supposed to be that of a young adult, although I don't really know if dogs can be considered Millennials or not. I guess that would depend on what year they were born in -- in dog years. 

Most of what we hear are Martin's thoughts, but in at least one scene in the premiere episode that ABC provided for preview, Martin faced the camera and actually talked audibly.

Although his actual voice was provided by an off-screen human (presumably), Martin's mouth moved in such a way that it looked like he was talking. Dogs really are amazing creatures, aren't they? Or maybe they gave him a Milk-Bone to chew on.

The bulk of Martin's observations are about Nan and the house they share because, after all, this is the extent of Martin's world.

He knows nothing of her work life, and even believes that after she gets in her car in the morning and drives away, she just continues to drive all day for hours, because he only sees her drive away and then return the same way some eight hours later.

In fits of frustration over being “abandoned” in this way, Martin literally chews the scenery. If he were a human actor, then that description would not be a good thing.

But in “Downward Dog,” Martin's -- or should I say Ned's? -- scenery-chewing is undertaken for the purpose of advancing the story. In the process, it also gives us great insights into Martin's day-to-day suffering.

The show's title might indicate to some that there is a yoga element to this situation-comedy, but at no time in the premiere did either Martin or Nan participate in a yoga class or do any yoga on their own.

The use of the term “Downward Dog” as this show's title might indicate that Martin's life is headed downward in some way -- as in “downward mobility” perhaps. But if Martin is headed toward financial difficulties, then there is no evidence of it in the series premiere.

A more accurate title might have been “Inward Dog” because here, for the first time on a network TV sitcom, we get to eavesdrop on the secret thoughts, and life, of a dog.

“Downward Dog” premieres Wednesday night (May 17) at 9:30 Eastern, and then moves to its regular night, Tuesday nights at 8, on May 23.