Arrested Development

Narrated by Ron Howard, Arrested Development tells the story of the Bluths, a wealthy Orange County family whose fortune is built on real estate.

(Edited highlights of the panel's review taken from the teletext subtitles that are generated live for Newsnight Review.)

GREER:
Excuse me for being jaded. But this is like court jester stuff from the evil empire. No wonder it didn't get any viewing figures. Americans don't watch this stuff. What they do is send it over here, you guys buy it, and think it's fantastic.

SUTCLIFFE:
You think this is not getting anything in America?

GREER:
Americans don't look at this stuff. This is on cable television. We've seen this over and over again. This is 'Six-Feet Under' set on a boat.

MANZOOR:
Nothing wrong with 'Six-Feet Under.' I thought it was pretty good. It's hard to judge after a couple of episodes, but it felt inventive and I liked the felt it was borrowing more from things like 'The Osbournes' and reality TV.

SUTCLIFFE:
I thought it was interesting, it showed that that stuff is trickling through.

MANZOOR:
To try and find out how you move comedy on, after the end of 'Friends' and 'Frasier' and 'Sex And The City,' I think that this at least points the direction. But I think BBC Two should not do what it did with 'Seinfeld' and 'The Larry Sanders Show,' in terms of scheduling, it might help with its ratings.

SUTCLIFFE:
John Carey, did you enjoy it?

CAREY:
Yes. I thought it had one very funny moment - David Cross playing Tobias. He's a failed actor. Well, he's not an actor at all, he wants to be an actor. He's neurotic pretending he's not neurotic. He weeps in the shower. When he produces 'Much Ado About Nothing' for school kids it's screamingly funny. He casts Benedict as the girl, and Beatrice is this hulking great teenager. And he's got a little plot; he thinks 'Methinks cupid I shall play.' It is very funny!

GREER:
It's like they've got the dumb black person on there who's been in prison, who calls the guy's father Petal. They've got the crazy gay people, they've got the bitch mama. You know, it's the whole thing. You can do this in your sleep. I don't know what to say. There is maybe a cultural divide here. But I thought it was horrible.

CAREY:
I think it's much sharper than you say. It gets quite bitter. There's a very good bit when the mother, awful Lucille, sees the servant struggling with her fur coat and says 'That coat's worth more than your house.' And her son is rather aghast at this, so she says 'That's our joke, she hasn't got a house anyway.' I mean that double bitterness is very funny!

GREER:
It's a whole bunch of one-liners isn't it? The whole thing that goes through is air.

MANZOOR:
I think it's one of those programmes that the people who like it will love it a lot, but not everyone will get it.

SUTCLIFFE:
The style, I just want to go back to that. They actually use a kind of hand held camera at one point. They have the Ron Howard narration throughout it, which is rather curiously pitched. It's not quite a documentary narration, it's something else. Do you think that works?

MANZOOR:
I think it does actually, because I think where television is moving is the blurring of genres. When you watch something and you're not entirely sure whether what you're watching is a comedy, or perhaps something in an 'Osbournes' style fly on the wall thing, it's when you're starting to subvert that. I mean 'The Office' proved that. The new laughs are in things where you're not entirely sure what you're watching. I think they should be applauded for at least trying something new.

SUTCLIFFE:
I did wonder, looking at particularly the third episode, whether they'd seen 'The Office' and thought actually, this is a slightly different direction.

GREER:
They've seen everything, I'm telling you. They're going to rewind 'Newsnight Review' at the end of the day. That's American TV.