Commentary

Nothing To Feel 'Sorry' About With TruTV's Funny New Sitcom


The news this week that “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is returning for a ninth season this fall serves as a reminder of what this comedy series spawned in the years since it premiered way back in 2000.

One of its descendants is premiering this week, as a matter of fact: a new comedy series called “I’m Sorry” on TruTV.

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” basically changed everything about TV comedy. Its semi-improvised, hand-held camera style has turned up everywhere in the 17 years since it started.

And its comedic contents were just as groundbreaking (and taboo-shattering), opening a doorway to a kind of anything-goes mentality for TV comedy today (more on cable, certainly, than on the broadcast networks).

But few of the shows “Curb” spawned could hold a candle to it, which is one reason why HBO has apparently given Larry David carte blanche to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, as long as the result is another flight of “Curb” episodes.

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The 10 episodes of season nine that are due to premiere Oct. 1 will be the first new episodes of “Curb” since the eighth season ended in September 2011. For the record, Larry David is now 70 (his birthday was July 2).

The template he invented for TV comedies – in which comedians behave badly in a world in which they don’t fit in – has been taken up by Andrea Savage, a movie and TV comedy writer, for a new comedy series starting Wednesday night. The show’s title – “I’m Sorry” – even echoes the title of “Curb.”

In the show, Savage plays a comedy writer living in Los Angeles, although her working life is not on view in the two episodes airing back-to-back on premiere night starting at 10 Eastern.

Instead, she’s an active, married mom of a young daughter who looks to be about four or five years old. Savage’s genial husband is played by Tom Everett Scott. Judy Greer plays a close friend, and Jason Mantzoukas (seen with Savage in the photo above) plays her writing partner.

Like so many comedies today, this one seeks to jolt its audience at the outset with a conversation about vaginas. This has become pretty old-hat by now in TV comedies, no matter what network they’re on.

But for this particular conversation, Savage involves her nursery-school-age daughter, thus rendering the scene more creepy than comedic.

The episode then proceeds to a plot line involving anal sex, when knowledge spreads among Savage’s s circle that one of the local moms works as a performer in the porn industry.

Clearly, “I’m Sorry” is made for adults. And adults -- even an adult TV critic of questionable maturity -- can find much to enjoy in this show, which happens to be TruTV’s second scripted comedy series.

This show is surprisingly sure of itself right from the get-go -- most likely due to Savage, for whom it's been developed. She’s a producer, of course, along with boldface names like Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Andy Samberg. (It occurs to me while typing “Andy Samberg” that I frequently mix him up with Adam Sandler for no rational reason. I wish they would cut it out.)

Episode two of “I’m Sorry” at 10:30 involves Savage’s young daughter once again for a story line about racism, as the toddler suddenly develops and voices an acute dislike of African-Americans -- because she doesn’t like the color of their skin, as she says pointedly.

The comedy that results concerns the contortions through which Savage tries to steer her child back to a state of tolerance for others.

At least while watching these first two episodes, I couldn’t figure out whether or not “I’m Sorry” is semi- or partially improvised in the manner of “Curb."

That’s one of the highest compliments I can pay to a show like this. If it is improvised, at least a little, then the fact that it’s not discernible is a very welcome quality. Some scenes in other shows are so obviously improvised that you can actually tell from the actors’ faces that they’re in the process of thinking up something to say.

That’s not the case here with “I’m Sorry,” which shouldn’t be sorry about anything.

“I’m Sorry” premieres Wednesday (July 12) at 10 p.m. Eastern on TruTV.

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