Hello Ladies painfully funny
Painfully awkward and, at times, painfully funny: That’s Stephen Merchant in Hello Ladies. The HBO comedy about a ridiculously tall and awkward Brit navigating the choppy dating waters of West Hollywood is funny and disturbing in equal measure, in part because Merchant, Ricky Gervais’ partner in creating the U.K. original of The Office, has social awkwardness down pat.
The running joke in Hello Ladies is that Merchant, playing a gangly, not-so-idealized version of his 6-foot-6-inch self, can’t land a date in Hollywood for love nor money. Hello Ladies is part farce and part fish-out-of-water tale, with an underlying streak of social commentary. In Friday’s episode, lonely web designer Stuart (Merchant) is encouraged by his first date with a yoga studio employee, played by Lindsey Broad, but it’s only a matter of time before he becomes unhinged.
The episode follows last week’s equally disastrous outing, in which Stuart’s friends hired a stretch limousine to cruise the streets of L.A., “limo-style,” with predictably dire consequences. In next week’s episode, Stuart illadvisedly takes his friends’ advice that gay clubs are frequented by straight women looking to find their one true love, or else get hitched for the night. The episode after that finds Stuart planning “an epic pool party,” even though he doesn’t have a pool.
Merchant writes and directs each episode, as well as starring in them, and the result is a curious mix of Old World manners and New World morals — Flight of the Conchords meets Sex and the City.
Hello Ladies usually airs on Sundays, when hardly anyone is likely to find it. It’s much easier to find on a Friday — date night! — when there’s little else worth seeing. Friday is an apt time, then, to catch up on same-week reruns. (HBO — 8 p.m.)