When I saw ads for "Hello Ladies" in a men's magazine, I was pretty excited. I have a love-hate relationship with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant: I think "The Office" is brilliant, "Extras" unfairly maligned, and am most of all a fan of their podcast series with Karl Pilkington. But they can also be off-putting: Gervais at times seems like he has transformed into his egotistical character David Brent, and Merchant has seemed suspiciously detached from their last few outings together (I'm not into rumor-mongering, but I'd be remiss to mention he was absent from the last series of An Idiot Abroad altogether, as well as the "Learn English with Ricky Gervais and Karl Pilkington" web series -- not to mention they haven't released any new podcasts in a few years now, all signs pointing to a desire on his part to leave the past behind).
Merchant seems like he's struggling to break free of the Gervais association, and so this HBO series (which is co-produced, incidentally, by Eisenberg and Stupinsky, the guys behind the American adaptation of The Office) finds him running solo. Merchant, like Gervais, excels at awkward situational humor. This series at times is extremely cringe-worthy, just like the greatest moments of The Office and Extras.
Here are some problems, though:
Merchant's character, as many critics have noted, is fairly unlikeable. This worked for Gervais as Brent because he was first and foremost a supporting character in the larger picture -- Tim and Dawn's relationship was what gave the series a backbone and a heart, and Brent was allowed to kind of seep into the program through the corners and find his own emotional core. But if The Office had just been about Brent being a miserable boss every episode, I do think the show wouldn't have resonated quite as strongly. Brent was also unaware of his own horrible actions, whereas Merchant's character in Hello Ladies seems happily self-aware.
The key to making a series like this is to have the main character be relatable to audiences. As a single 20-something young professional, I can relate to the single club scene and the frustrations of a bachelor lifestyle. Merchant wisely exaggerates the pathetic underbelly of the Los Angeles nightlife, with aspiring actresses and sleazy guys trying to work their way up the social ladder.
But instead of allowing his character to find himself lost in this haze, Merchant actually makes his character even more unlikeable than many of the people he's ostensibly doing social battle with.
This produces a stream of inconsistency in the character which is hard to shake. An example: in the first episode of the show, Merchant's character, creepily trying to hit on a beautiful woman way out of his league, inadvertently spends hundreds of dollars ordering drinks at a swanky nightclub. This is played for laughs, but never for a moment does he hesitate the way a normal person might: he puts the drinks on his tab and keeps trying to hit on her.
But in episode three, he takes a really cute girl out on a date (a girl many might say is out of his league, mind) who keeps trying to initiate conversation with him. But he can't focus on the conversation because he's too distracted by the high price of the wine bottle (he frequently excuses himself to privately tell the waiter that the $70 bottle is too expensive).
OK, let's consider this for a moment. Is it funny? At face value, yes, because all of us can relate to a situation where we've been casually forced into spending way more than we want to, especially during something like a first date. But it doesn't jibe with the character, because just two episodes earlier, he was willing to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on a girl who he had far less of a chance of sleeping with.
In another episode, Merchant's character is doing yoga and cockily hits on a beautiful woman next to him. But in other episodes, his ineptitude and shyness around women is played for laughs. So which is he? An arrogant jerk or a timid geek?
Merchant is so overly focused on making situations awkward that, as a result, his character doesn't ring true, and often the comedy feels quite contrived.
Having said all that, I do enjoy it, and I think there's room for improvement. The leading co-star, played by Christine Woods, really steals the show from Merchant with her easy charm. She's essentially the "straight man" from a comedy perspective and, honestly, her character and her plights are waaay more interesting (and consistent, and realistic) than Merchant's. I like Merchant, but the roles should be swapped if he's not going to develop his character further or make him more likable. I'm four episodes in, and at this point I care way more about Woods' character than Merchant's.
The show is entertaining, though. It's just not anywhere near the level of perfection of The Office or really even quite as funny as The Office. I think Merchant is simply trying too hard and needs to re-evaluate both his character, and where he wants to take the show. If it's just a sleazy, opportunistic guy trying to pick up women every episode (and being cruel and sadistic to his friends in the process), then it'll get old really fast. He needs to give his central character a more empathetic core, and a greater consistency in tone, and allow the awkward situations to evolve organically rather than force them to happen.
I could see these improvements taking place, and hopefully by the end of its first season the show will have evolved into something greater than just a reasonably entertaining program.
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