‘COMRADE DETECTIVE’
The conceit of the show: It’s a long-lost, Romanian, pro-communist cop show from the Cold War-era that’s been dubbed in English by a voice cast that includes Channing Tatum, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Nick Offerman, among others.
In reality, the whole thing was recently filmed in Romania always with an eye toward spoofing jingoistic TV and film content of the 1980s.
Premiering Friday on Amazon, “Comrade Detective” offers some hilarious depictions of the Ugly American stereotype (men scarfing down fast food hamburgers in a corner of a U.S. embassy) along with good gags at the expense of communism. (When an apartment dweller calls the police because a dead man’s apartment door is open, the cop responds, “I’m sure it’s just a neighbor’s misguided attempt at redistributing Nikita’s wealth.”)
Unlike most 1980s cop shows, “Comrade Detective” is serialized with a lot of “to be continued” endings in its six episodes as detectives Gregor Anghel and Iosef Baciu investigate the murder of another officer, which leads them to a bad guy who wears a Ronald Reagan mask as he tries to destroy Romania through capitalism.
“Comrade Detective” certainly has its moments, but its one-joke premise may make it a tough sell for all six half-hours.
‘WHAT WOULD DIPLO DO?’
Sort of an attempt to do a modern “This Is Spinal Tap,” “What Would Diplo Do?” (9 p.m. Thursday, Viceland) follows a fictional version of real-life music producer/ DJ Diplo (James Van Der Beek, who is also the showrunner).
At a Viceland press conference Friday, Mr. Van Der Beek said he was recruited for a commercial for Diplo’s tour, which led to a Vice executive suggesting a series. It doesn’t hurt that Mr. Van Der Beek and Diplo (real name: Wesley Pentz) have a similar look and that Mr. Van Der Beek already has experience playing a fictional version of a real person when he played himself on ABC’s “Don’tTrust the B---- in Apartment 23.”
“Getting into that head space, you know, it’s just such a rich role to play, this whole Diplo thing,” Mr. Van Der Beek said. “He’s an international superstar. He’s incredibly talented. And he’s charming. There’s a real childlike, boyish charm to him. So we were able to give him that superpower of music genius, which 99.9 percent of people wish they had, and then saddle him with a million blind spots, which are not blind [spots] to most humans, things like perceiving reality, vocabulary.”
Director Brandon Dermer said the show also depicts celebrities facing the same daily challenges as the rest of us.
“I just think it’s really cool to kind of pull the veil back and realize that these people that you admire, they have their own problems; they have their own failings; they have their own issues,” he said. “They’re real people.”
Mr. Van Der Beek said from his past experience he had ideas of what would be necessary to make a Diplo parody work.
“The only way to do a show like this is if somebody is completely game,” he said. “When I did ‘Don’t Trust the B---- in Apartment 23,’ I said to [showrunner] Nahnatchka Khan, ‘Don’t ever be afraid of insulting me. You have to go with what’s funniest. And if something really bumps or I think it’s going to be bad for my kids, I’ll tell you privately.’ Andthat never actually happened.
“And when Brandon and I went to visit Wes at his studio, he said, ‘Just make me look completely stupid,’” Mr. Van Der Beek continued. “That was really the only answer that would have made this show worthwhile, because he’s so confident in his ability, that he’s just allergic to taking himself too seriously.”