Kath & Kim: Season 1

Although based on a hit Australian sitcom of the same title, the American remake of Kath & Kim manages against all odds to be painfully, almost excruciatingly unfunny. The premise has spoiled, selfish new bride Kim (Selma Blair) leaving her still-adoring husband (Mikey Day) after just a few short weeks of marriage to move back in with her brassy, fortyish mother, Kath (Molly Shannon). Hilarity definitely does not ensue. The gals are insulting caricatures—dimwitted suburbanites fixated on gossipy tabloids and tacky fashions—and their respective love interests (Day as hubby Craig, and John Michael Higgins as Kath's sandwich-shop-owning fiancé) are reduced to playing modern-day equivalents of I Love Lucy's Ricky Ricardo and Fred Mertz. Saturday Night Live alumna Shannon is always grating, but the usually engaging Blair is almost as irritating: her Kim is a one-note character afflicted with a perpetual pout. The hapless men fare little better, with Day looking completely lost as Craig and Higgins constantly struggling to breathe life into his Phil Knight. A typical episode, “Dating,” has Kim trying speed dating, much to Craig's chagrin, while Kath frets that she and Phil don't know enough about each other to get married. Trite and laborious, Kath & Kim might be the worst sitcom in years. How it lasted a full 17 episodes over the 2008-09 season is one of the decade's great mysteries. DVD extras include audio commentaries, deleted scenes, and a gag reel. Not recommended. (E. Hulse)