TV: Community

Time to talk about yet another one of my favourite US sitcoms, this time one of the lesser known ones, it's the Community College set, Community!!

Simply, seven loveable misfits form a study group in a Community College (It's a bit like the Open University) and get into crazy adventures both in and out of College and sometimes reality.  What I love about this show is the sheer uniqueness of the format, writing and style of it and of course the cultural references!

The characters are brilliantly created, written and acted, especially Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi) who is a Film and TV nerd (like me!), Jeff Winger (Joel McHale) the unofficial leader of the group and Ben Chang (Ken Jeong) the college's former Spanish teacher now student.  Abed basically lives his life as a TV show and doesn't understand real life, admit it, you'd want to live in a TV show (The Big Bang Theory would be mine!)  Jeff is a character who has grown the most, he started the study group mainly to get with Britta Perry (Gillian Jacobs) and now after the third season is searching for his long-lost father, emotional stuff.  Senor Chang is very weird, but you can't help but love him and hate him in separate measures, it does make me very Chang-ry though!  Other characters are Troy Barnes (Donald Glover) a former high school Quarterback, Annie Edison (Alison Brie) the well-organised one, Shirley Bennett (Yvette Nicole Brown) a religious housewife, Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase) a businessman with old-world views and Craig Pelton (Jim Rash) the college's flamboyant Dean.

The show's format is very odd, some episodes are very normal, but at least a third of them are completely different styles, they have had war-style episodes with paintball, an episode entirely in clay-mation, a episode where they play Dungeons & Dragons and a few set as a documentary.  Most of these are the best episodes, the paintball episode is one of my favourites.  It's a very unusual way of telling stories, but at least they know that, Jeff usually points out the silliness of these stories and that makes them okay.

The first season is on DVD and the second season will be out soon in the UK, anyone reading this is the US will know season 4 is on TV soon, so watch out for this quirky, yet enjoyable show!