Cult web series Broad City makes transition to television

Web series don’t always transfer well to TV but a series that’s gaining comparisons with Girls is one exception.

Broad City, starring Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson, borders on sketch comedy.

DVD Letterbox is wary of “cult web series” transferring to television.

For all the foibles of the world’s major broadcasters, they have their reasons for not producing many programs, and that reason is elementary: they’re just not good enough.

That is not to say all of them are not good enough, but, in my experience, web comedies in particular can tend to be one-note enterprises whose weaknesses are covered by very good production skills.

One Australian comedy web series getting some hype, Footballer Wants a Wife, looks fantastic and is produced slickly, yet it’s premise and gags are thin.

And last year’s partnership between Screen Australia and YouTube to produce a bigger-budget, broadcast-ready series of episodes from a handful of Australia’s more promising YouTube entities yielded only one show that could have moved smoothly to pay TV or a free-to-air secondary channel, the Mighty Car Mods. The rest remained fringe ideas, their makers ecstatic to be given the chance to blow some real money.

American comedy series Broad City is another web series that has transferred to pay TV in the US (on Comedy Central) and here, although much of the attention it attracted was generated by the “traditional” comics attached to it: Parks and Recreation’s Amy Poehler produces the series and stars including Fred Armisen and Janeane Garofalo pop up on screen.

Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, members of comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade, play (presumably) more feckless, extreme versions of themselves in this sitcom that borders on a sketch comedy.

They are cash-strapped millennial buddies doing their best to survive while postponing ambition in Manhattan. Their lives fit the cliche of the millennial: connected, much too prone to sharing and aimless but for the pursuit of fun.

The obvious comparison, due to its setting at least, is to Lena Dunham’s Girls and, despite Broad City’s uneven laughs and narrative, it is arguably more palatable. It fits with the tone of Girls , in which the female leads are allowed to be antiheroes, self-absorbed and incompetent. But Abbi and Ilana are daffier and the tone shifts enough to ensure when an episode, or sketch, goes down a dead end it doesn’t necessarily end there.

Previously, I’d dipped into the series as a channel-hopper, thinking it was a sketch comedy, but with the first series now collated on DVD (MA15+, Roadshow, 212min, $29.95), it all makes more sense.

It doesn’t all make great sense, yet I’m mildly involved in their travails, if only because they are unpredictable and willing to risk anything for a gag. Some of it is flat, some mad, and a little pure genius. They had me when they asked: “Who teaches the bucket drummers?” Niche gag, but nice.

Twitter:@michaelbodey

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