Janet Smith
Young and single was getting seriously boring till Ally McBeal made her case on television in the United States last year. Critics were yawning over the trendy narrative of ensemble casts in emotional crises after yet another season of superstar sitcom Friends, which earned that show’s cast a few million more.
Come now. Tales of a young single attorney having problems with men? We’ve seen it all before. No doubt she would have a very close gay confidant – not camp, just boom-sha-ka-la-ka sexy – who would commiserate over her problems with straight men.
American critics were nagged by a good feeling about the show only because it was directed by David E Kelley, the king of witty TV drama whose reputation has been built on solid hits like Picket Fences, Chicago Hope and SABC1’s The Practice. Kelley has a natural penchant for intriguing, entertaining medical and legal scenarios and knows how to deliver plots on screen that look so much like real life, but that throb with deep eccentricity.
So, after a couple of weeks on air, critics in the USdeclared Ally McBeal the best drama of the season, hailing lushly talented star Calista Flockhart a triumph. They also fell completely in love with her alter egos, including a delicious, unreal, morphing baby which is one of many characters that epitomise, Jim Carrey- like, her inner thoughts. If you still remember the fabulously underrated Dream On, you’ll have an idea of how sight gags are used to brilliant effect in this show.
Although there is almost nothing about Ally McBeal that detracts from its appeal, it is the imaginary sequences that have quickly turned the drama into a cult, comparable in its philosophy, some highbrow critics have said, only to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
Now SABC3 has brought the ultimate smash of the American TVyear to our small screens, with 22 magical episodes that started on Monday May 25 in the 9.30pm slot. And the channel is also set to air the titillating, offbeat comedy Dharma and Greg – a supreme experience for love-at- first-sight couples – from next month, offering M-Net stiff contest in the area of top American exports.
Ally has an ex-boyfriend she has adored since she was seven. He is now married to someone else, and is a fellow attorney at her new firm. She has one sleazy partner and one mad partner, and the office politics that emerge from this colourful quartet will put your own to shame.
The show is distinguished by exceptional writing which is as funny as it is dramatic and occasionally satirical.
Ally gets busted for shoplifting spermicide. She tries to date a rabbi. There is a pair of semi-regular Jewish characters called the dancing twins. A bad-girl attorney named Caroline Poop. A randy judge played by Dyan Cannon.
Meanwhile, Dharma and Greg (starting on SABC3 on Saturdays from June 6) is likely to hold almost as much allure once viewers have got into its peculiar sense of fun. It introduces Jenna Elfman and Thomas Gibson, who knew they would be lovers for life the first time they locked eyes on each other.
Dharma is a born-and-raised hippie who works as a yoga instructor and dog trainer. Greg is a Harvard-educated assistant US attorney from a conservative family. Of course their relationship works. Their paths crossed for the first time when they were six and travelling with their parents in the subway, and destiny is the most potent television drug of all.