Remember much about the 2011 movie comedy Bad Teacher, starring Cameron Diaz as the title character? Nah, me neither. I do recall she habitually smoked pot and got drunk at school, swore at her students and played movies during class so she could sleep. And her life's goal was landing a rich husband, which she believed she needed breast augmentation to achieve, so an absurd amount of the movie was devoted to her schemes to raise money for said surgery. Besides that, all I can recollect is it wasn't very funny, despite the hard work of Diaz and co-stars Justin Timberlake and Jason Segel.
Now it has been turned into a TV show, which isn't an intrinsically terrible idea - if you're adapting a story from one medium to another, it's generally best to pick a property that wasn't very good to begin with.
There are exceptions, of course - I was appalled at news the brilliant Coen brothers' film Fargo was being used as the basis for a television series, and look how that turned out.
Anyway, I watched the first episode of Bad Teacher with low expectations but an open mind. Suffice to say my expectations were met and I give it a grade of "meh".
The basic set-up from the movie is more or less retained, with Diaz's gold-digging teacher played by Ari Graynor, whom you may remember from The Sopranos. I don't. In this version, though, she has faked her teaching qualification because she thinks high school is the best place to meet rich single dads.
