Previewing HAPPYish

Last fall Rolling Stone in their television preview issue included a list of The Greatest TV Series That Never Were. Most of the shows that made up that list were just shows that were passed on by the networks that developed them. One curious case was HAPPYish, a show that Showtime was high on but was shelved when star Philip Seymour Hoffman died of an overdose after the pilot was filmed. In the interim, ABC pretty much co opted the title for one of its sitcom before Showtime decided what to do with the project.

Almost half a year after Hoffman's death Showtime dusted off the script, casting Steve Coogan as the lead. It is an interesting choice as Hoffman was a well regarded dramatic actor while Coogan seems to come from the Monty Python school of British comedy. And actually casting a comedic actor as a lead in their comedy is actually kind of rare for Showtime. Kathryn Hahn returned to the project as the lead's wife while Rhys Ifans has been replaced by Bradley Whitford as the lead's boss (apparently there is room for only one Englishman on the show).

Though the general public never got to see the Hoffman version of the HAPPYsh pilot, from the description of the critics that saw the trailer that Showtime produced, the new version seems to be unchanged aside from the lead aging an extra two years to forty-four. There is even still a Keebler Elf dream sequence in both. It is hard watching Coogan version without think about how Hoffman would have approached the scene.

Coogan plays a happyish forty-something with two small kids who is dealing with being an old person in a world that only appreciates younger people. Making things worse, he works in an industry that only enforces the spotlight on being younger: marketing. Where Black-ish works as if features a black man raising his children in a white suburban world, HAPPYish is completely misleading as non of the characters have any slice of happiness in their lives. Instead everyone on the show ranges on the anger scale somewhere between curmudgeon and a Ted Cruz voter.

So if you like the idea of old people complaining about basically everything, this show is for you (i.e. anyone planning to vote for Ted Cruz). Really everyone is so angry, they really should have just gone ahead and cast Lewis Black instead. Sure the angry rants can be funny (Coogan is right, why would anyone follow Pepto Bismol on Twitter?) the show is at its best when it goes completely absurdist, be it a homicidal and over-sexed Keebler Elf, a talking Amazon smile, or a fowl mouthed Geico Gecko.

HAPPYish airs Sundays at 9:30 on Showtime.