Following in the footsteps of other premium cable outlets such as HBO and Showtime, IFC is starting to introduce more original programming. It already has talk shows (including the Emmy-nominated Dinner for Five), game shows and reality shows, but this week it's adding narrative shows to the mix in what looks like a bid to compete with its more prestigious brethren. In reality though, the channel's new offerings are closer to Comedy Central than to HBO, which is both good and bad. None of the shows are trying too hard to be edgy and adult, but they also end up being stale and conventional at times.
The best of the three is the animated Hopeless Pictures (Fridays, 10 p.m.), created by writer, director and actor Bob Balaban, a veteran character actor who's instantly recognizable but not exactly famous. Balaban's many roles include parts in each of Christopher Guest's excellent mockumentaries (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind), and he recruits a number of Guest's regular players, including Jennifer Coolidge and Michael McKean, for voices on Hopeless Pictures. McKean plays executive Mel Wax, who runs the titular studio and has to deal with all sorts of Hollywood pitfalls, including dim-witted actresses, self-centered directors and judgmental dentists who won't fix his teeth because he's not famous enough.
Hopeless doesn't unearth any new truths about the movie biz, but like other insider-y shows, including The Larry Sanders Show and Entourage, it's full of Hollywood cameos and is self-deprecating enough to be fitfully funny. The animation is done in a strange painterly style that occasionally recalls the Comedy Central "squigglevision" classic, Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist (whose star, Jonathan Katz, shows up as—what else?—a therapist).
Sandwiched between Hopeless and IFC's other new half-hour show about the movie industry, The Festival (Fridays, 10:30 p.m.) is a series of shorts, starring cult hero Greg the Bunny, named—what else?—Greg the Bunny. Greg is a puppet created in 1997 for New York City cable access, and most famously had a failed sitcom on Fox in 2002. Despite his spectacular failure, the bunny and his puppet pals have a rabid fan base, and IFC (which ran interstitials featuring the characters from 1999-2000) have brought him back. I remember Greg's eponymous sitcom, which featured Seth Green and Sarah Silverman alongside its puppet stars, as painfully unfunny and contrived, and even after watching two of the new shorts, I still can't figure out the character's appeal. The episodes are mostly film parodies, and the two available for review (spoofs of Annie Hall and The Godfather) are obvious, and like the sitcom, not very funny.
Which is exactly how you could describe the mockumentary The Festival, which is in many ways the flip side to Hopeless Pictures. While Hopeless lampoons mainstream Hollywood egos, The Festival takes aim at the pretentious indie crowd, following a young director (Nicholas Wright) as he takes his first feature to a mountain film festival that looks suspiciously like Sundance. The Festival is constructed entirely out of clichés, from the angry, butch-lesbian filmmaker whose festival entry is called My Vagina Scares You to the sleazy tobacco company sponsoring the festival. There are disingenuous studio executives, unctuous publicists and uncultured town residents, but none of them are nearly funny enough to get the kind of pass that Hopeless' stock characters occasionally warrant.
Ultimately the problem with both full-length shows is they aren't looking beyond the content that IFC already has. If the channel ever expects to get as much buzz for its original programming as it does for its diverse slate of movies, it's going to have to reach farther for ideas than its own back yard.