Jen and her department of IT "professionals" continue their unrewarded and unrewarding careers deep in the basement of Denholm Enterprises. The work problems are still easy to fix (usually by turning it off and then on again) but the personal confusions are far from easy to navigate with mobile phones, dinner parties, funerals, cookery classes, pirate DVD's, uncomfortable underwear and other things cause endless problems.
Recently a handful of comedies came back for season 2 namely Hyperdrvie, Saxondale and The IT Crowd. They all had their first seasons around the same time and they all pretty much left me amused at best but also doubting that I would see any of them again. Hyperdrive came back first and left me with the question "why" that none of the six episodes were able to answer. Saxondale I have yet to sit and watch, but The IT Crowd also makes me wonder why they bothered. Well, maybe that is unfair because it is better than Hyperdrive in terms of laughs and tone but it is similar in the way that it just does what season 1 did which is an issue for me as it didn't overly impress me but it did entertain. And so it was with season 2 as episodes were amusing but rarely anything special. The plots were quite contrived (of course) but what let them down was that it too often lacked a real spark of imagination to the delivery.
I laughed here and there but it is not a classic comedy by any means and those comparing it to Father Ted in regards quality are off the mark in my opinion. The laughter track is not a lesson learnt from last season; it is heavily used for even the slightest joke or misunderstanding and it just served to highlight to me that the thing I wasn't laughing at was supposed to be hilarious. The cast continue to help the best they can. O'Dowd seems a bit more comfortable in the role and his aggression is tempered with a bit more of the nerd than came through last time. Parkinson is still trying too hard and pushing the "manic" button for all she is worth. She isn't helped by being the weakest character in the piece but hers is the weakest performance of the trio. Ayoade is my favourite and he does get the best material. I complained last time that he was just a poor man's Dougal but that is a bit unfair and he is the character/actor who I like the most. The loss of Morris was a real issue for me and replacing him with Matt Berry didn't really work for me. OK Berry was quite fun and gave the writers a new narrative device to work with, but few comedy shows would put "drop Chris Morris" on their wish list for actions during their second season. Fielding is OK and his character is used a lot more this time and I suppose at least is another person in the department for the writers to work with.
Amusing stuff then that is funny here and there but mostly just silly. I still found it quite entertaining but nowhere near as funny as it should have been and it certainly doesn't compare favourably to Black Books and/or Father Ted. The scripts are too contrived and it does flow like ideas have been pieced together by any means possible, with some of them quite hilarious, some of them obvious but too many of them just "ok".
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