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Hey guys watch this new show
Jul. 26th, 2012 09:23 pmApparently no one else watches quirky Canadian comedies about assholes, because no one bothered to inform me that Ken Finkleman has a new show. It's called Good God, and I'm about five episodes in and completely addicted.
See, years ago, I was into this TV show called The Newsroom (not that one everyone is watching now) and this other TV show called More Tears. Finkleman played the same character in both, a narcissistic, neurotic, womanizing TV executive named George Findlay. This one is about the same character, but you don't need to have watched the other shows. All you need to know is that he's a terrible person with decent politics.
So in Good God, George is dating the philanthropist daughter of a wealthy media baron who is in no way either Rupert Murdoch or Conrad Black. Her father offers him a job as head of FOX News North—er, Right News—and all of a sudden, George finds himself in the unenviable position of being the least awful person in the room. Right News is an uncomfortable alliance of Randroids, old-money aristocrats, fundamentalist Christians, and a few folks just in it for a quick buck. It's low-hanging fruit for satire, except that Finkleman is generally at his best when he's taking potshots at the left, so there's also some great bits with limousine liberals and, in one particularly lovely segment, historical materialist architects.
It's a bit The Office and a bit Colbert Report, but there's a uniquely Canadian angle in that right-wing populism doesn't translate well here. FOX News didn't exactly make it up here, after all. And even our equivalent, the Toronto SUN, occasionally does decide that the Honourable Wife Beater is just too crazy and extremist. So it's about the media and in particular the right-wing media, but it's also about the very strange political moment we're in where we are dipping our toes into politics that up until recently would be considered outright insane. It's a show for the Harper/Ford era and it's nearly as frightening as it is hilarious.
Also in it: Samantha Bee from The Daily Show and a guy I went to high school with.
Here's one of my favourite parts. The four on-air personalities have just been informed that they need to take a 25% pay cut, and they decide to band together and fight back against their employer—until someone points out that this is collective bargaining and they've just accidentally formed a union.
And here is Finkleman out of character being pretty damn cool (I hate Strombo but the interview is great):
See, years ago, I was into this TV show called The Newsroom (not that one everyone is watching now) and this other TV show called More Tears. Finkleman played the same character in both, a narcissistic, neurotic, womanizing TV executive named George Findlay. This one is about the same character, but you don't need to have watched the other shows. All you need to know is that he's a terrible person with decent politics.
So in Good God, George is dating the philanthropist daughter of a wealthy media baron who is in no way either Rupert Murdoch or Conrad Black. Her father offers him a job as head of FOX News North—er, Right News—and all of a sudden, George finds himself in the unenviable position of being the least awful person in the room. Right News is an uncomfortable alliance of Randroids, old-money aristocrats, fundamentalist Christians, and a few folks just in it for a quick buck. It's low-hanging fruit for satire, except that Finkleman is generally at his best when he's taking potshots at the left, so there's also some great bits with limousine liberals and, in one particularly lovely segment, historical materialist architects.
It's a bit The Office and a bit Colbert Report, but there's a uniquely Canadian angle in that right-wing populism doesn't translate well here. FOX News didn't exactly make it up here, after all. And even our equivalent, the Toronto SUN, occasionally does decide that the Honourable Wife Beater is just too crazy and extremist. So it's about the media and in particular the right-wing media, but it's also about the very strange political moment we're in where we are dipping our toes into politics that up until recently would be considered outright insane. It's a show for the Harper/Ford era and it's nearly as frightening as it is hilarious.
Also in it: Samantha Bee from The Daily Show and a guy I went to high school with.
Here's one of my favourite parts. The four on-air personalities have just been informed that they need to take a 25% pay cut, and they decide to band together and fight back against their employer—until someone points out that this is collective bargaining and they've just accidentally formed a union.
And here is Finkleman out of character being pretty damn cool (I hate Strombo but the interview is great):
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