By Ken Anderson
In hopes of commemorating its forthcoming 10th Anniversary, Lisa Kudrow’s cult-hit HBO comedy, The Comeback is being considered for a limited-event series revival in 2015.
I’m a big fan Lisa Kudrow from her sparse film work (1997sClockwatchers being a particular favorite), but due to the fact that I was never fond of Friends, I was among the many who failed to pay much attention to her outstanding (and hilarious) follow-up series The Comeback when it aired for a single season on HBO back in 2005. A kind of Stateside companion to Britain’s mockumentary /“cringe comedy” hits, The Office and Extras by Ricky Gervais (all owing a debt to Monty Python, Christopher Guest, and Woody Allen), The Comebackchronicled the increasingly humiliating efforts of fictional has-been 90s sitcom star Valerie Cherish (Kudrow) to revive her career. Lampooning Hollywood, television and the then-novel “reality television” craze, each episode of The Comeback was presented as the raw footage of a reality show about Valerie’s attempted show business comeback via a particularly odious Fox TV-like sitcom titled Room and Bored.
I only became aware of The Comeback after it was released on DVD and friends, knowing my fondness for Arrested Development and the BBC version of The Office, informed me that if I liked those shows, the biting satire of The Comeback should be right up my alley. And indeed, they were right. Joining the ranks of a devoted, ever-growing cult of Johnny-come-latelies who recognized in The Comeback a show way ahead of its time, I found it hard to believe this wholly addictive, laugh-out-loud comedy suffered in the ratings and only lasted a single season.
Happily, as reported last month, HBO, in response perhaps to the successful restoration of Arrested Development on Netflix 7 years after it had went off the air, is in talks with The Comeback series co-creators and executive producers Lisa Kudrow (Web Therapy) and Michael Patrick King (2 Broke Girls) to revive the cult-hit series.
Still just in the talking stages, HBO and The Comeback's creative team are said to be eyeing a 2015 return. In the meantime, for the uninitiated or those who can never get enough of Aunt Sassy, all 13 episodes ofThe Comeback are available for viewing on the HBO Go website
No comments:
Post a Comment