What’s this show called … Outnumbered?

I like Noah Wyle. I never got into ER, so I’m not sure how extensively I’ve experienced him as an actor — briefly on Friends, and a handful of ER episodes after he came back from the Third World — but I know enough about him to click off the “good actor” box on his checklist.

But Falling Skies became the latest example of work of his that’s not for me when, after planning to view the two-parter “Sanctuary” episodes for this week’s column, I had to stop after the first ten minutes of part one. It’s just not for me.

So instead I went with a show that came highly recommended in a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly: the 2007 BBC original Outnumbered, now airing on BBC America for the first time. With a description that vaguely reminded me of the heavily impromptu Sons & Daughters, even the fact that I’ve never particularly enjoyed British comedy didn’t dissuade me from checking it out.

Admittedly, part of me did fear that the show would bear some resemblance to the ubiquitous reality series about outsized families. Luckily, Outnumbered is nothing like that. Sure the kids outnumber the parents — three to two — but it’s less about numbers, and more a very simple story about a family trying to manage life with all its normal craziness.

Hugh Dennis (Pete) and Claire Skinner (Sue) are the Brockmans, father and mother to three very different, and potentially unruly kids. At thirteen Jake’s (Tyger Drew-Honey) a bit young to be as “teenaged” as he is, while seven year-old Karen (Ramona Marquez) hasn’t yet found herself in the pilot episode. Ben (Daniel Roche), meanwhile, reminds me a lot of Luke Dunphy on Modern Family; the nine year-old is hyperactive, addicted to lying, and delivers his lines better than anyone else. It’s hard to tell if he’s being extemporaneous, but from the little that I saw I believe he’s good enough to be ad libbing his way through the entire thirty minutes.

Outnumbered is a fairly straightforward family story, its weekly plots not so much a driving force as the backdrop that the Brockmans play in front of, more reminiscent of the Huxtables than of most of the show’s peers on TV today. The gamble then is on the family’s ability to make themselves more interesting — and more reliable — than whatever nonsense they’ve got going on in a given week. Can they handle it? Well, Ben was fantastic just asking his father questions about whether different weapons would kill different things.

But the catch for American viewers is that all of this was written, produced, and performed by Brits with British comedic sensibilities. It could be a coincidence that I’ve failed to be taken in by any of the number of British productions that I’ve tried — including the original version of The Office, which I didn’t find even remotely funny — but it’s more likely that the British style of entertainment is just not my cup of tea.

Outnumbered didn’t prove to be much different. While the simplicity of the premise is great, and Ben is a superstar, everything was just a bit too dry, a tad too subdued, for this American. There’s a wryness to the British that has its place … I’m just not convinced it’s on sitcoms.

But I’ll be looking for Daniel Roche in the years to come.

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Aug 02, 2011 @ 14:00 EST5EDT