Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

TV Land charts new territory with 'Jim Gaffigan' and 'Impastor'

It might not seem true, but not everything is targeted at millennials. TV Land, born as an offshoot for Nick at Nite's reruns of classic TV, has been trying to reinvent itself as a hub for sitcoms geared toward Gen Xers, the once-ballyhooed generation now smack-dab in the middle of adulthood, looking to escape their ever-growing bundles of joy with a little TV.

Buddy (Michael Rosenbaum) moves the crowd with his powerful sermon in "Impastor." (Photo courtesy of TV Land)
Buddy (Michael Rosenbaum) moves the crowd with his powerful sermon in "Impastor." (Photo courtesy of TV Land)Read more

It might not seem true, but not everything is targeted at millennials.

TV Land, born as an offshoot for Nick at Nite's reruns of classic TV, has been trying to reinvent itself as a hub for sitcoms geared toward Gen Xers, the once-ballyhooed generation now smack-dab in the middle of adulthood, looking to escape their ever-growing bundles of joy with a little TV.

That strategy works exceedingly well for the The Jim Gaffigan Show. Starring Gaffigan, the King of Clean Comedy, it premieres at 10 p.m. Wednesday. The strategy is less successful with the following show, Impastor, featuring a deadbeat (Smallville's Michael Rosenbaum) who assumes the life of a deceased gay pastor to escape some goons looking to do him harm.

TV Land wants to do for sitcoms what cable has done for drama: give shows more leeway, rather than force them to adhere to the tenets that usually drive network TV. It's not that big of a change for TV Land. After all, as it aged, the channel has made its bones rerunning more Roseanne and Friends than, say, I Love Lucy. But in June, with the end of its first original show - Hot in Cleveland, fairly traditional in structure and cast - there's an opportunity to change course.

The network's self-reinvention already can boast one success: Younger, starring Broadway vet Sutton Foster as a stay-at-home mom who pretends to be 26 so she can get a job in publishing. Ushered to the screen by Sex and the City vet Darren Star, Younger was adorable and spunky, if implausible. (Catch the first season on Hulu Plus and Xfinity On Demand.)

TV Land extends the winning streak with The Jim Gaffigan Show. It's surprising Gaffigan hasn't had a sitcom already. He's one of the few comedians whose act does not need to be toned down for prime time. This show is largely about his love of food and life, lived with his wife and frequent collaborator, Jeannie (played by How I Met Your Mother's Ashley Williams) and their five children, all crammed into a two-bedroom Manhattan apartment.

Gaffigan chooses not to play it safe. He tweaks both his nice-guy image and the family-sitcom formula just enough to make his show feel new - yet he retains the sense of familiarity that beckons viewers and keeps them watching.

In one episode, Gaffigan - after being photographed carrying his wife's Bible - is worried about being seen as religious. He's not ashamed of his Catholicism; he just doesn't want people to know about it.

"The perception is that people who believe in God are stupid," he says to his wife's friend, Daniel (Michael Ian Black).

"Your signature bit is you singing 'Hot Pockets,' and now you're worried people will think you're stupid?" Daniel says.

Gaffigan is a very traditional sitcom dad: absentminded and lazy, with a long-suffering wife who single-handedly keeps the family running. But Williams' Jeannie is not a human fun-suck. She may roll her eyes at her husband's foibles, and with reason, but she also gets hammered on scotch with him when peer-pressured into it.

Gaffigan's world is populated by other comedians, most regularly his friend Dave (Adam Goldberg), and the list of cameos in the first five episodes is impressive, from Chris Rock and Jon Stewart to Glenn Beck and Philadelphia's Jake Tapper.

It's a wonderful start to a sitcom that would likely not fit in at a network but has a cable home that gives its creator room to try new things.

Impastor wouldn't fit in at a network either - in part because of its quality.

Happenstance leads bummy Buddy (Rosenbaum) to steal the identity of a gay pastor on his way to tend to his new flock.

Buddy finds he has a real knack for leading the faithful. His counsel - picking out Bible passages at random to give to a couple in need; telling a rebellious teenager he will go to hell if he doesn't start being nicer to his mother - turns out to have great meaning for those in search of it.

Buddy's lifestyle - drinking, confiscating congregants' weed for his own personal use, and stealing identities for his own gain - is supposed to contrast with the intense sweetness, and ignorance, of his new community.

Where Gaffigan can intelligently dissect pop-culture portrayals of the religious, Impastor plays right into the stereotypes. Gaffigan uses his cable home to cloak boundary-pushing ideas in a traditional sitcom. Impastor has an edgy veneer - but once it rubs off, you're left with an entirely ordinary show.

215-854-5909

@mollyeichel