Brockmire

It's a comedy home run. [3-16 Apr 2017, p.19]

The other half of what makes Brockmire special--raunchy and depraved, but also surprisingly tender and even romantic (imagine Catastrophe if most of it took place at a minor league ballpark)--is how Azaria and the show’s creator, Joel Church-Cooper, are able to find the vulnerable human being underneath the accent and his familiar plaid blazer, even as Brockmire never breaks character or stops talking like he’s doing play-by-play on his own life.

While not every moment works, Brockmire the TV series offers a world worth visiting, and characters worth rooting for, even when they stumble.

Brockmire gets off to a very funny (and very vulgar) start. I don't know how long the premise will hold up, but it begins with a lead-off hit and scores multiple runs.

Azaria and Peet are great, together and separately. Both bring a humor and sympathy to characters that might otherwise prove difficult to tolerate, let alone like.

If you loved the baseball film “Major League” but always wished Bob Uecker’s broadcaster character had been darker and more bawdy, this is your show.

Over the course of the eight episodes, Brockmire moves through a trio of arcs, delivering underdog sports hijinks, the Jules-Brockmire romance and Brockmire's sad and probably doomed search for redemption. That's all propped up with enough low-brow jokes, raunchy baseball references and disreputable hijinks that the show never wallows.

Brockmire is a weird, funny portrait of a singular man, and it paints its picture very well--working both as a snapshot of this aging oddity of Americana and a universal story about a washed-up person coming to terms with himself, despite several drunken efforts to the contrary.

Brockmire doesn’t throw a perfect game on its first trip to the mound, but it gets most of its pitches across the plate--and even delivers some surprising dramatic brushbacks.

The plot is consistent--completely ridiculous from the first of the eight episodes to the last--but credibility isn’t anyone’s concern here.

When Brockmire is in the broadcast booth, Azaria’s arias of baseball lore are mesmerizing and witty, but the show also relies too frequently on jokes about Brockmire leaving the microphone open during embarrassing moments.

Later episodes suggest Brockmire will try to become a better person. That’s a bad call. The fun is watching him spin out of control like a drunk pitcher’s fastball.

This series has issues, but much like its titular character, if you can look past them you'll find Brockmire a true diamond in the rough.