Studio 60 - hot or not?

I’ve just caught up with the first four episodes of West Wing-creator Aaron Sorkin’s new NBC show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. And, no, it’s not as good as TWW, but that’s a pretty tough gig to follow. Sorkin can take heart from Joseph Heller:

"When I read something saying I've not done anything as good as Catch-22 I'm tempted to reply, 'Who has?'"

It’s a problem Sorkin acknowledges up front in this exchange between Bradley Whitford’s not-Josh-Lyman-no-sirree-no Studio 60 producer, Danny Tripp, and NBS president, Jordan McDeere, who has just bigged-up their new show to the press:

Josh Danny: You raised the bar a little high.
Jordan: Clear it.

Anyway, here’s my likes/dislikes of Studio 60 to date:

Great:

1. It’s. Aaron. Sorkin. Writing. For. Telly. Again. If you can’t rejoice at that, you are spiritually dead. Fact.

2. Matthew Perry is a triumph as Matt Albie, currently acting everybody else off the screen (including Bradley). Yeah, so he’s still pretty much the wise-cracking Chandler Bing - but he’s a lairy, haggard, Vicodinned-up Chandler, and I can dig that.

3. The chemistry between Josh and Chandler Danny and Matt sooo works. Even the homo-erotic stuff is ironically hat-tipped as they self-consciously slug it out in the sand.

4. Snappy, whiz-crack dialogue rants, like this: “there's always been a struggle between art and commerce, but now I'm telling you art is getting its ass kicked, and it's making us mean, and it's making us bitchy, and it's making us cheap punks, and that's not who we are.”

5. Or this: “You can blame the blogs, but I blame The New York Times. They quote the blogs like they've found a source. CNN quotes the blogs. 'Beverly, Editor-in-Chief of the BeverlyBlog, says the Fed should cut interest rates to counter the drop in consumer spending over the past fiscal-' who the hell is Beverly? I don't believe in free speech, I think it should require a license. What happened to credentials. What happened to being impeccably credentialed, and when did elite stop being a good word?”

Not Great:

1. No really likeable women: no CJ Cregg, no Abi Bartlett, no Donna Moss. I guess we’re meant to root for Jordan. But I can’t.

2. Sarah Poulson’s Harriet Hayes, one of Studio 60’s leads, and a good ole’ southern Baptist girl, principled but not uptight (giving Sorkin the kind of cover from the Christian right that TWW’s Ainsley Hayes gave him from the Republican right). She’s supposed to be Matt’s love interest, but there’s zero chemistry. She’s supposed to be hilarious, but forgot to bring the funny. As Mandy was to TWW’s first season, so is Harriet to Studio 60.

3. The show is lacking the wise patriarch figure of a President Bartlett, who could close an episode with his ‘Jerry Says’ spiel of liberal enlightenment. Steven Weber’s NBS chairman Jack Rudolph might become that guy, but Sorkin seems conflicted whether to make him into God or Satan.

4. Erm, not too sure quite how to put this without blaspheming against Sorkin, but… Studio 60 just isn’t funny enough. Not so much the programme as a whole, but the show-within-the-show Studio 60: gags are laboured and sketches drag. Not as badly as the lethargic Letterman (folk still watch him?), but, compared to the pin-sharpness of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, Studio 60 sadly trails.

5. It’s behind-the-scenes telly, not behind-the-scenes politics. I’m interested in both, but I care about the latter. It never mattered whether or not I understood why Leo was so pissed with the House majority leader’s attempts to tack on a reservation to the Appropriations Committee’s Social Security (No Pensioner Left Behind) Bill (or whatever) - I got the issues, I wanted Leo to win. Not sure I can get so fired up about whether Matt can nail his ‘cold open’ for Studio 60.

Curious? Watch the first 10 minutes of Episode 1, Pilot, here.