Hipster comedy gets annoying-ish

Thom Payne is a man looking oblivion in the face. At least that's how Thom Payne saw it in Thursday's premiere episode of Happyish (9.30pm, SoHo), a new American-made sitcom starring British-made actor Steve Coogan.

Payne actually has much to be thankful for - a loving wife, a child, a job, a lovely house - but as he turns 44 he finds much to be ungrateful for. He's middle aged. He's on anti-depressants. He's suffering from erectile dysfunction. And now the advertising agency he works for, in a job he doesn't really care for anyway, has been taken over by blond-haired, bullshit-spouting Swedes, all of whom appear to be 25 years old.

Payne and his awful boss Jonathan are, they believe, endangered species in a world that's gone to hell in a tweet. "In a couple of months, I expect to be replaced by a f**king app," spits Jonathan.

If you're thinking this makes Happyish sound like it's a giant existential moan about what it's like to be a white, middle-aged bloke in the 21st century, well go straight to the front of the class.

But despite its pretensions toward the philosophical (Thom Payne, geddit?), there is absolutely nothing subtle or even particularly clever about this black comedy. Even to this middle-aged male, it's far, far too whiny about the subject to really work. Besides does anyone really care that life might get a bit tough for privileged, white middle class males in their 40s? Probably not.

True there were some excellent lines in the first episode, most of which can't be repeated here because the script is extremely rude and sweary. But it's actually at its best observing life anyway; I liked Payne's exchange with Ellen Barkin's Dani Kirschenbloom, a recruitment headhunter, where she suggested the idea of a "joy ceiling" that once hit couldn't be broken through: "That's why Jesus wept - low joy ceiling."

The best thing about this though is Coogan.

His performance, all things considered, gives proceedings more laughs and more heart than a lesser actor might have found in this material

Written by a Jewish-American novelist by the name of Shalom Auslander, the show feels like a comedy written by a hipster Woody Allen. Ultimately however Happyish is a little too annoying-ish, a whole lot self-serving-ish and only occasionally funny-ish.

Just as gloomy about modern life but somewhat more satisfying is The Casual Vacancy (8.30pm, Wednesdays), a three-part adaptation of the J.K. Rowling's first adult novel which also began on SoHo this week.

I haven't read the book, but this mini-series, as I understand it, tweaks the plot a little. However Rowling's themes are all here: class warfare, greed and poverty in broken Britain.

In the picturesque village of Pagford, some of the local council plot to turn the town's community centre - an old house bequeathed by a philanthropist - into a spa in a cunning plan to try to keep the poor and the addicted of the nearby sink estate away from their apparently idyllic little community. When a fair-minded councillor (the outstanding Rory Kinnear) dies suddenly, the council's snobs see their chance to replace him with one of their own so they can build the spa and keep the alleged scum out of town.

Whether this three-hour adaptation will be quite as good as I'm told Rowling's book was, is too early to tell. But on the evidence of part one, it is certainly beautifully and imaginatively filmed, has an excellent cast and is bleakly and subtly funny in a way that Happyish could learn from.

- TimeOut