TV review: My Name is Earl | Katie and Peter: The Next Chapter Stateside

Published on Thursday 25 June 2009 20:44

MY NAME IS EARL, E4 KATIE AND PETER: THE NEXT CHAPTER STATESIDE, ITV2

HIS name was Earl and he was a petty criminal, until he won the lottery and decided to commit to a life of atonement, making a list of sins, from venal to – well, none of them was all that bad, really. It was a sitcom, after all. But it was a pretty original concept for one, with Earl's weekly adventures aimed at seeking out those he had wronged and attempting to make up for it, usually with plans that backfired but worked out for the best in the end.

Unfortunately, for a show with such a strong premise, the finale didn't manage to pay it off, as the show was cancelled unexpectedly by its American network. Perhaps it was running out of ideas: the amiable Earl (Jason Lee) started off the season in jail, then fell into a coma with an alternate dream reality – always a sign that writers are getting desperate – before marrying a woman (Alyssa Milano) who wanted to force him to abandon his karma list. Lee was certainly trying his best, and scenes with Jaime Pressly, a very funny Judy Holliday type who played his ex-wife, Joy, usually provided a few laughs, but the show seemed gimmicky and tired.

In the last episode, Earl and his dopey brother, Randy, returned to the Amish village they'd grown up in, where his wife randomly decided that she would rather stay there than continue her enraged efforts to undo his list, thus freeing him to get back to reparations. Neat, but hardly a satisfying conclusion; it would have been better, and funnier, to have wrapped up Earl's quest more decisively. Now that's bad karma.

So many American shows tend to be suddenly cancelled, to the distress of their fans – and for us, with even less control over their fates (sometimes they're dead before they even reach our screens). Sometimes you feel it's hardly worth making the time for a new imported series which could abruptly disappear without resolution.

Then again, sometimes the very gap between a series being made and being shown can give it a whole new dimension, as in Katie And Peter: The Next Chapter Stateside. Perhaps "dimension" is the wrong word; it would be hard to argue that there is any level of deep meaning in this unreality show. Previous series have tottered along on the grisly fascination of Katie's diamond-hard directness bouncing off Peter's soggy affection.

But this one, filmed a few months ago, is still framed as a portrait of a happy if peculiar marriage, even amid daily paparazzi updates of their split (dead-eyed Katie posing in her knickers on an Ibiza beach in front of bemused punters, Pete sobbing on his tiny mother's head and desperately clutching his children).

Even aware of the obvious fakery of most of its staged scenes – they're always "spontaneously" going bowling first thing in the morning, etc – you can't help but look for glimmers of their impending disaster.

I have no idea whether it's "true" (if true means anything in the world of Katie & Peter), but what emerges is a sad portrait of a man gradually rebuilding his fragile confidence – albeit a deeply dopey, orange man whose musical instincts haven't moved on since 1982 – and a woman whose own sense of self-worth is so warped that she can't even recognise it, let alone react well. Few dramas have had so much pathos.