Richard and Max have been best friends since high school, where they bonded over their respective social flaws. They now live together and do nothing but watch TV, obsess over TV and act out spoofs from various series, adverts, reality TV shows and wrestling tournaments. A love interest throws a spanner in the works of this soul-destroying habit and makes them question their lifestyle.
Presented in the style of a sitcom, the show explores the effects of TV on these young men’s social awareness and life ambitions. They are distracted by the screen when on a date with the aforementioned love interest, when they are arguing, when they are reconciling and on their final note of separation. The whole thing is flooded with TV references and TV-related sketches, but not in a very clever or witty way.
Jokes were predictable, the humour was that of a nerdy thirteen-year-old boy and the genre of the whole show came across as bad high school comedy. The plot featured the timeless cliché of two best friends feeling their relationship jeopardised by a love interest.
They were trying to create funnily awkward moments but the acting just wasn’t sharp enough and the situations too commonplace to be found funny. On top of that, Hamish Parkinson had a way of bursting into shrill, screeching rants when his character was supposed to be angry, which made him completely unintelligible. Brynley Stent - assigned the role of bully, TV show host and love interest - flaunted the best acting skills but was on stage the least, sadly.
The most apparent asset which TV seemed to have diminished was the imagination of these young Kiwi comics, and their ability to come up with an original and effective script.
