In the pantheon of TV comedians Jerry Seinfeld occupies a position of almost unrivalled supremacy. His 1990s hit show Seinfeld was lauded as the greatest show in small-screen history, an example of network television at its peak.
If only the comic’s output since Seinfeld ended in 1998 could be regarded in the same exalted bracket. He has been involved in a documentary, written a few books, produced the highly forgettable animated film Bee Movie, and now created a TV comedy series that has been so thoroughly panned by critics its future looks in doubt even before it begins.
The Marriage Ref was given its first sneak preview on Sunday night by NBC, which seized the chance to broadcast it to a massive captive audience immediately after the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics. Judging by the howling reaction, NBC might be wishing its launch had been a little more low-key.
“The most God-awful mishmash of a comedy-variety show,” wrote Time magazine’s TV critic. Alan Sepinwall of the New Jersey paper the Star-Ledger said he still considered Seinfeld one of the greatest sitcoms ever, but that only rendered his devastating comments on the “painful, pointless, obnoxious” Marriage Ref all the more withering.
The Baltimore Sun said the show didn’t deserve to be scheduled in daytime syndication, let alone the Thursday night prime-time slot that NBC has reserved for it. “Who knew Seinfeld could be this unfunny?”, it said.
The media website Gawker went so far as to wonder whether in TV historical terms “Jerry Seinfeld’s new show almost cancels out Seinfeld“.
NBC executives turning to Twitter in the hope of more favourable support from viewers would only have turned a more deathly shade of white, as the social network hummed with further critical assassinations. Several tweets adopted the hashtag #marriagereffail.
Seinfeld came up with the idea for the show during a row with his wife Jessica, in the presence of a friend. They got the friend to act as a referee on the dispute, at the end of which Jessica proclaimed: “That’s a TV show.”
The show has a panel of three celebrities refereeing bizarre marital disputes. Sunday night’s panel included Seinfeld himself and Alec Baldwin riffing on a couple, in which the husband wanted to erect a lap-dancing pole in the bedroom and another husband who had stuffed his deceased dog, to both the respective wives’ disgust. Future episodes will feature panellists Madonna and Ricky Gervais.
Last week Seinfeld gave an interview to the New York Times in which he said he was unable to resist making the new programme. “If it’s a good idea, you become its servant. A good idea has a draft suction, that you get pulled into it.”
The only problem is that if the critics are right, The Marriage Ref is not a good idea so much as, in the words of Sepinwall, an “ugly, unfunny, patronising mess”. – guardian.co.uk