Wednesday, July 05, 2006
A Spelling lesson
No preview today, bitches. No, instead we'd like to talk to you about a show that's become very dear to our hearts over the past couple of days. A show that, to the best of our knowledge, has not aired in the UK yet. But we have our sources who've allowed us to catch a sneaky glimpse of a few episodes, and we think it's fair to say that this show needs to have a UK airdate established immediately if not sooner. What could this magical, miracle show be, you ask? Well, it's called So noTORIous and it's Tori Spelling's sitcom. No! Wait! Come back!
We're aware that the corridors of television are clamouring with terrible sitcoms that were commissioned as a vehicle for an actor or actress who couldn't get any other work. This one is different, however: largely because it's funny. And sharp. And pleasantly self-mocking. And well-acted. And not many people would expect to say that about a show that features Tori Spelling in the lead role, but it is and we love her. The show is basically a fictionalised version of her own, deeply surreal life, where she grew up in Hollywood and had money coming out of her ears, and was roundly ridiculed for all of her attempts at an acting career. Basically, it takes the notion of Tori Spelling, admits that it's a fairly ridiculous idea, and then hangs her and her entire existence out to try, by her own consent. Tori Spelling is always best when playing herself (see also: indie gay movie Trick), and as the show's website says, "it's the role she was born to play".
The mocking nature of the show is one of the main reasons why we like it: Spelling plays herself as paranoid, klutzy, pampered, disaster-prone, and utterly untalented. We like nothing more than a person who can take a joke about herself, and here she goes one step further and makes the jokes herself. In the (fictionalised, if we must remind you) show her mother is a distant, alarming creature with horrendous lips who barely listens to a word she says, her father only appears in voiceover in a cute Charlie's Angels pastiche (always pitching new roles she can play on his shows: "there's always room for another witch on Charmed...") and she's surrounded by the requisite amount of kooky friends: shallow and acerbic realtor Janey, slutty med student Pete and obligatory GBF Sasan.
Again, we're aware that it sounds nothing special, but we assure you it's far better than it has any right to be: the script is full of zinging one-liners and the cast has brilliant timing. Our personal favourite so far is the second episode where Tori's boyfriend draws her into a $cientology/Kabbalah-esque cult, where everyone is in pursuit of "Wholeness", and only by achieving said Wholeness can you become "Relevant". (A frustrated Tori snots: "I am Tori Spelling! I don't need to be relevant!"). We also love the running gag where one of Tori's friends will remark on her strange behaviour, always culminating with them saying to her "Why are you like that?" Cut to Tori with a haunted look on her face before cutting into a flashback of her childhood, where she's doing something unspeakably humiliating or incomprehensibly strange, usually at the behest of her mother, that explains exactly why she might view this situation a little unconventionally, before snapping back to present-day Tori who shakes it off and breezes unconvincingly, "I don't know!"
It's kind of weird watching the show given the recent demise of Aaron Spelling and subsequent tabloid nastiness, but don't let that put you off what amounts to a sharp, witty, screamingly camp sitcom that's made us laugh out loud more than any show we can remember in recent history. Of course, we can only prove this to you if the show gets a UK airdate, so can somebody sort that out? VH1? Living TV? Anybody?
(Oh, and there are gays getting off in a sauna. What's not to love?)
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3 Comments:
Your site is so great
Very glad I took the rceommendation to have a read
Keep it up
Hysterical insights
London's Cityslicker
By 
City Slicker, at
1:52 pm
Oooh, gays :D
By 
, at
9:17 pm
I have seen this too and it is hilarious.
By , at
11:45 am
