The Comedians

Despite two versatile comic performers at the center, The Comedians comes across as the most cutting showbiz satire of 1991.

The fictional Crystal and Gad have zero chemistry as the series launches, which becomes a pivotal part of the plot as the series progresses. Unfortunately, their real-life counterparts portrayed this lack of comedic chemistry so well in the beginning that it not only impacted the development of show within the show “The Billy & Josh Show,” it was leaving a lukewarm first impression of The Comedians as well.

The show gets funnier--and so does the show within the show--but four episodes in, the whole setup still felt more like work than it probably should.

The anti-chemistry between Gad and Crystal, though played for laughs, doesn’t often result in them. Instead, my interest was held by the opportunity The Comedians provides to think about why there’s such a widening gap between Crystal’s kind of big-gestured, boisterous comedy style and Gad’s quieter comedy of sweaty desperation.

While The Comedians is OK, the overall effort feels a little too familiar.

While talent is crucial, talent alone is not enough. And there's only so much bad material, and so many bad choices, talent can surmount.

The Comedians is a strangely mixed bag, which works or doesn't work from moment to moment and from mode to mode.

So the Josh half of this show’s central joke grows a little tedious. In truth, so does the Billy half; he’s too resistant to too many things for scant reason. But Mr. Crystal and Mr. Gad play it gamely, and the proceedings are enlivened by an enjoyable collection of guest stars, like Steven Weber, Joe Torre and Mel Brooks.

When the second bananas nudge the top ones, The Comedians has laughs. When it leaves the two to play out a tired game of “The Sunshine Boys,” they vanish.

There’s no bite to anything in this show.... The sketches that Crystal and Gad perform in are all solid B-minus to C-plus. Their stop-and-start friendship is utterly unremarkable. Nobody seems willing to go anywhere remotely risky.

Crystal just seems too nice to be big-timing a guy like Gad, no matter how much Gad revels in his own ability to annoy.... The Comedians feels forced.

The best cringe comedies finely tune the balance between discomfort and laughs. The Comedians needs to work on its balancing act, because there is a lot more of the former than the latter, and that turns out to be no laughing matter.