Plane clothes cops
THERE are days when, unbidden, a line will come to me from the 1980 film Airplane! and I will briefly be bent double laughing. If you haven’t seen Airplane! you need to re-think your life choices, but in brief it’s a parody of the “who will land this plane?” action genre. Much of the humour is based on extremely silly verbal puns, of which the most famous is probably the exchange in which one passenger asks another: “Can you fly this plane, and land it?” The other responds: “Surely you can’t be serious!” To which he receives the reply: “I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.”
This is precisely the brand of comedy that new US series Angie Tribeca is built on, and I would say that an affection for Airplane! is an accurate predictor of whether or not you’ll get on with Angie Tribeca. Currently airing on DStv channel 102, the show is a joint effort between comedy actor Steve Carell — star of the US version of The Office — and his wife Nancy.
Carell isn’t in it, but other alumni of The Office are front and centre, including Rashida Jones, who plays the eponymous heroine. Angie Tribeca is a misanthropic, hard-edged cop who warns her new male partner not to expect friendship, because she works better alone. Sounds familiar? The show takes wellworn clichés of cop shows, like that one, and exposes their absurdity. Inevitably, sexual tension between Tribeca and her partner grows — but every time they’re about to kiss, they are interrupted in some ridiculous fashion.
I can’t promise that everyone will find Angie Tribeca funny, because you need to have an extremely high appetite for pure silliness. One of the cops is a German shepherd dog, for instance, who communicates with his partner through barks, drives cop cars and drinks takeaway lattes like the rest of them. Punning is the lifeblood of the show. At one stage, Tribeca asks a doctor if he has a minute to “look at a little mole”. When he agrees, she presents him with an actual mole, as in a small furry mammal. “Looks suspicious,” says the doctor. When the detectives say “Let’s bounce,” it means they’re about to exit on a pair of pogo sticks.
Steve Carell’s star voltage has enabled him to lure a bunch of famous friends to join the fun. Friends star Lisa Kudrow makes an appearance in the first episode; actor James Franco has a cameo as Tribeca’s disappeared fiancé Sergeant Pepper, and Bill Murray also comes to the party later. Radio Times described the show as “comedy Marmite”, which is probably accurate. But I’ve always been a Marmite fan.