Creature Comforts America: The Complete First Season (review)

I’ve been railing lately about the idiocy of remaking British TV for American audiences, and here’s another excellent example of it not working. Based on the 2003 British series -- which was in turn based upon acclaimed animator Nick Park’s Oscar-winning 1989 short, “Creature Comforts” (watch it online here) -- this is seven monotonous, repetitious half-hour episodes of the voices of “real Americans” talking about everyday life married to stop-motion clay-animated animals. But it is a marriage of convenience only: none of the subtle underlying social commentary or sweet studies of ordinary people of the original short comes across here. Unless accidental and inadvertent statements about the out-and-proud crassness of American culture count: the first episode opens with two men talking, quite obviously, about the bouquet of a glass of wine... and the animation features two dogs sniffing another dog’s butt. Charming. That’s pretty much par for the course in these conversations about fears and phobias, what celebs the “real Americans” been told they look like, work, love, pet peeves, and more. Instead of showing off the wonderful wisdom to be found in the ordinary, it highlights the ordinary in the most banal way possible. This “complete first season” includes the three episodes that actually aired on CBS in June 2007 before it was yanked from the air, plus four more unaired ones. The bonus material includes additional scenes and the mysterious “Live Action Videos,” which are not, as you might expect, footage of the “real people” who supplied the voices but members of the production team lip-synching along with those voices. What’s the point in that? [buy at Amazon]

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