New Comedy: Raising Hope

In times of financial uncertainty there are two things that humans will always look to for comfort and escapism: sex and comedy (if you're particularly frugal you can combine the two, like my ex-boyfriend). During The Great Depression, people turned to the screwball comedies of radio and screen to pull them out of the doldrums, now we find ourselves in The So-So Slump it seems like more and more sitcoms and dramedys (I hate that) are being produced to help us through the cold, dark nights.
There's the excellent Community, home-grown chucklefest Miranda (Mon 9pm BBC2), and smart documedy Modern Family (Thurs 7pm Sky1) to name a few of my current favourites. Even the BBC are getting in the game, re-showing episodes of frankly marvellous Still Game on Monday nights. In Scotland anyway, I don't know what the rest of you losers get.

A new show is joining the throng of merriment tomorrow night at 10pm on Sky1, and it'S a show I was at first hesitant to watch, but was hooked after about 10 minutes and devoured the first 4 episodes in one sitting.
Raising Hope was created by Greg Garcia, who also thought up My Name Is Earl and is similarly about a group of very working class Americans who, for various reasons, have found themselves at the arse end of the American Dream.
Virginia and Burt Chance (Martha Plimpton of The Goonies and Garret Dillahunt of Deadwood) were 16 when they got pregnant, got married and had to face the very harsh realities of life as high school drop outs. They live with Virginia'S batshit crazy grandmother Maw-Maw and their son Jimmy, the product of their youthful shenanigans. Jimmy, 23, works with his dad and cousin cleaning pools being a general adorable no hoper until he meets the beautiful Lucy Carlisle one night, running away from an enraged ex-boyfriend. She shows Jimmy her thanks in a very special way, and he’s smitten with her. Until her face appears on the evening news as a serial killer who has killed over 10 so-called boyfriends. They turn her over to the police, and that’s that.

Except that’s really not that.
7 months later, Jimmy gets a call. Lucy’s having a baby, and not only that, but she’s getting the “Electric Bye Bye Chair” and he’ll have to bring up Baby Princess Beyonce himself or drop her at the fire station. The comedy comes not only from Jimmy’s complete naïveté of all things baby, but from the excellent family dynamic and the sweet new relationships the newly named Baby Hope brings both in and out of that family.

It’s fresh, smart, funny and isn’t afraid to push buttons. Unlike Earl, there’s not really much of a moral to the show, unless you count “bring up your child like a good guy” as a moral, so it doesn’t (yet) have the schmaltz of that show. And none of them are scientologists, so… win. Speaking of Earl Hickey, when you watch the Pilot tonight, be sure and listen to the newscaster talking about Lucy’s spree, you might just hear a little pay-off for our modern day Good Samaritan.