Film On TV: Sifting Through Fall's New Shows, Part 1

Every year around this time my DVR fills up with new shows fighting for attention, rookies looking to break into the Must See TV lexicon. And each year the Movie Gal and I sift through the batch, selecting a few special shows to share couch time with on exhausted week nights.

We watch too much TV, and me more than her. So over the past few years we’ve tried to curb our addiction, allowing only a few new Fall shows to remain in our lineup – since 2008, Community, Fringe, Modern Family, Sons of Anarchy, The Good Wife, The League and The Vampire Diaries (can you guess who watches what?).

I know. That seems like a lot. And it is. But the average American watches around 5 hours of TV a day (*Nielsen), and those shows add up to about that much spread out over the course of a week, so I think we’re doing okay.

There’s a plethora of new network and cable shows this year, the largest number in recent memory. Here’s a rundown of what we’ve seen so far…

Get Him to the Greek (2010)

Get Him to the Greek is Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s dirty rotten cousin.  It’s crude, disgusting, reckless and awkward.  It’s Almost Famous posing as your drunken uncle’s binge trip.  And it’s really, really funny.

  Written and directed by Sarah Marshall’s Nicholas Stoller, Greek isn’t a sequel so much as an abstract spin-off devoted to Russell Brand’s Aldous Snow persona, a cheesy British rock star fallen from the sobriety wagon into a deep, druggy abyss.  Jonah Hill plays Aaron Green, the eager young music biz employee Aldous is dragging down with him.  It was Aaron’s brainchild to stage a comeback concert for the disgraced Snow, and he’s got three days to make sure that happens.  It’s the opportunity of a lifetime, and a misstep into a life he is in no way capable of living.