The TV Set

Copyright 2006, ThinkFilm

For some reason, I can remember specifically some movies I see on New Years' Eve, as a way to cap off that year. In 2003, the last film I saw before the ball dropped was S.W.A.T., just another film Colin Farrell will likely want to never hear mention of again. In 2008, the last film I saw, thanks to my Netflix-streaming Blu-ray player, was The TV Set, a somewhat incisive look at the development of a television pilot from many points of view, written and directed by Jake Kasdan.

David Duchovny is the star here, playing Mike Klein, a bearded and paunchy writer whose latest show, a dramedy about a man who falls in love after attending his brother's funeral, is being made into a pilot for the upcoming tv season for one of the big networks. Mike is a neurotic, worrying about each aspect of the show and having so much back pain he has to go to the hospital at one point in the film. Take your knowledge of recent Hollywood dealings, and Kasdan's connections; Duchovny is most likely playing some version of Judd Apatow, the bearded and somewhat paunchy writer who went through hellish network sessions to get his brilliant-but-cancelled shows Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared onto NBC and Fox, respectively. It's no surprise that Apatow's also an executive producer here, even if many of the cast members aren't Apatow regulars.

The movie begins as final auditions for the lead roles in Mike's pilot are going on in front of some network execs, specifically Lenny (Sigourney Weaver, trying to channel a sillier version of Faye Dunaway in Network) and Richard (Ioan Gruffudd, doing his best here, much better than as Mr. Fantastic), a recent transplant from the BBC. The lead male role is given to Zach (Fran Kranz), who plays the understated character-within-a-character as over-the-top as possible, horrifying Mike. To make the show, however, Mike has to bite the bullet and accept the self-absorbed Zach as his lead. Meanwhile, Richard's having trouble getting used to his new job, as his wife (Lucy Davis from the BBC version of The Office) becomes less and less enchanted with his determination and dedication to prove himself.

I haven't even gotten to the machinations during the filming of the pilot, from lighting to camerawork to the director's decision to film almost all dialogue offscreen to be cinematic. What's most shocking is that this movie is, with credits, under 90 minutes. Though almost all the threads are interesting, and Kasdan deserves credit for wanting to give at least one of the executives a human face, not nearly enough time is spent on everyone. That, in itself, is the biggest problem of The TV Set. I'd like to be interested in Zach's relationship with his female counterpart, but Zach is a character who's so strangely defined (one sequence in the film involves him doing three completely different versions of a post-funeral scene in the pilot without any explanation of why he's so off-the-wall).

The only other major issue is the final scene, where the pilot, which has been completely reworked to lose all realism, is shown to advertisers at the upfront presentation and, despite its over-the-top nature and obvious ridiculousness, they eat it up. I'm not saying people aren't idiots (the movie's central theme), but I do have some faith in my fellow Americans. Unlike Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow, though, I wasn't burned by the schmucks who took Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared off the air, so fair play to them. In essence, this film isn't bad, but just too slight to be remembered...unless it's the last film you saw in a year.

Two and a half stars out of four