Genres

Visitors Review

joey_alcock 2012-05-18 15:32:51

Should find its feet if given the chance

The basic physical set-up of The Joy of Sets, being two men sitting ina lounge room, belies the Frankenstein-esque ambition of its creatorswho have sought to build out a half hour comedy program by stitchingtogether fragments from a variety of popular light entertainmentformats. These include clip show, sketch show, panel discussion show,talk show and game show. It is perhaps this diversity of formats whichresults in the first episode "Sell the Meat" feeling ratherfrenetically paced, and perhaps somewhat disjointed, as hosts TonyMartin and Ed Kavalee race through each segment, most of which last forless than a minute.The underlying premise of The Joy of Sets is the exploration oftelevision conventions, with each episode devoted to one particularaspect of television production. "Sell the Meat" focuses on the openingtitles and how these function to entice and retain the attention of theviewer. This allows Martin and Kavalee great leeway to create humorousmoments and for the most part, the gags hit the mark. Arguably, themost compelling edge that The Joys of Sets has is Martin's extensiveknowledge of television shows, and particularly some of the moreobscure and often esoteric moments in TV history, which less-obsessedviewers have long forgotten. This differentiates The Joy of Sets fromother clip shows such as The Soup, Tosh 2.0 or TV Burp which typicallyfeature "bloopers from the last week".Given the sketch comedy and radio backgrounds of the writers and hosts,pre-recorded bits work well unsurprisingly, particularly the finalculmination in which all the elements we've "learned" about during thecourse of the program are recreated in montage by Martin and Kavalee intheir own style. Hopefully, it is the intention to finish each episodein this fashion.Despite the positives, certain elements of the show need ironing out asthe series progresses. One would expect direction to be relativelystraightforward given relatively few fixed cameras but cuts are clunkywith Kavalee in particular continually "caught out" looking at thewrong camera. Furthermore, Martin seems to be unable to limit hisengagement with the live audience which is distracting for the viewer.His style of presentation appears to be that of his stand-up openingroutines from The Late Show. The live audience works well enoughalthough the decision to effectively populate the studio with long-timefans of Martin and Kavalee's previous endeavours, particularly GetThis, resulted in abnormally large laughs for gags which specificallydrew on the pair's legacy material, and ironically made the laughssounds like a prerecorded track, and far too ebullient in the mind ofthe layman (with respect to Get This).The guest spot which featured actor Peter Phelps also proved slightlyawkward, not only because Phelps had to hold his own door open for fearof it closing on him, but also because material had clearly beenpre-written that required machine-gun-like responses from the clearlybewildered guest for them to work. Phelps was admirable but there was adistinct Thank God You're Here vibe to this element.Channel 9 has been relatively limited in its promotion of The Joy ofSets although the first episode followed a popular US sitcom whichshould boost the numbers beyond that commensurate with the level ofdirect promotion. There is clearly enough in the concept and the hoststo put together an 8 episode series, and the flow of the program willdefinitely improve as it matures. In a year which has seen Channel 9show little patience with light entertainment programs that do notperform strongly from the outset, it would be a definite shame if theseries did not run its course.