• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, April 7, 2023

Many would no doubt agree that our world today is not exactly a barrel of laughs.

Perhaps that is why some new TV shows categorized by their networks and streamers as “comedies” are promoted as “dark comedies.”

TV publicity departments choose their words carefully and purposefully. When they choose to position a comedy series as “dark,” they are doing so under the assumption that the prospective viewers they are trying to reach are in a decidedly “dark” mood these days and not in a frame of mind to LOL.

Two announcements in the TV Blog’s inbox recently each described new comedies as “dark.”

The first arrived from AMC Networks for the new comedy “Totally, Completely Fine,” starring Thomasin McKenzie. It starts streaming April 20 on Sundance Now and AMC+.

The phrase “dark comedy” was used in the headline of the news release about the show. In it, McKenzie plays a young woman named Vivian who is evidently very sad, judging from the above photo. 

The subject matter is indeed dark. Vivian is in a mental health crisis, she cannot pay her bills and she drinks too much.

The news release says she is just about to commit suicide by sharing her bathtub with a hairdryer when the phone rings. “The granddad she has avoided for years has died in his sleep and left her his house,” the description says.

“When Vivian arrives at the shack, she discovers the cliff in the yard is a known suicide site and her grandfather is tasking her with saving every lost soul that passes through. 

“Suddenly this blunt, angry woman is talking people away from the ledge. Maybe in saving others, [will she] slowly learn to save herself?”

This series may be dark, but it is not without hope, says the news release. “ ‘Totally, Completely Fine’ is a moving yet hopeful [italics mine] comedy about the mental health crisis, the complexities of grief, and the ways our sadness can unite us.”

Dark or hopeful: That is the question. Perhaps it will be answered when the TV Blog takes a look at the show in advance of its streaming date.

The other “dark comedy” that made its presence known recently is called “High Desert,” coming to Apple TV+ May 17. A news release twice described it that way.

This new, eight-episode dark comedy stars Patricia Arquette, Matt Dillon, Christine Taylor, Brad Garrett and Bernadette Peters.

Arquette is the star of the show, playing a woman named Peggy. According to the news release, Peggy is “an on-again, off-again addict who decides to make a new start after the death of her beloved mother with whom she lived in the small desert town of Yucca Valley, California, and makes a life-changing decision to become a private investigator.”

The words “hope” or “hopeful” are not seen in the press material emailed to the TV Blog, but “a life-changing decision” sounds pretty hopeful to me.

Note that in both shows, the lead characters each experience “life changes” following the death of a loved one.

The lead characters also share a substance-abuse problem. In fact, the title “High Desert” might refer to the lead character Peggy’s addiction history in addition to the show’s desert setting.

In “Totally, Completely Fine,” the character Vivian is described as drinking too much, but the description provided by AMC Networks does not go so far as to label her an alcoholic.

Vivian’s new role as a troubled woman talking people off a ledge who are just as troubled as she echoes the theme of “Tiny Beautiful Things.” 

That was the Hulu show reviewed here yesterday that stars Kathryn Hahn as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown who gets a job writing an advice column for people with problems like her own.

However, nowhere in the Hulu publicity materials is “Tiny Beautiful Things” described as a comedy.