Avenue 5 (both seasons)

I was drawn to this by Armando Ianucci’s involvement, and intrigued by Hugh Laurie’s presence (plus supporting case – Zach Woods, Rebecca Front, and Josh Gad as a low-rent Jack Black). While the first couple of episodes struggled to figure out what they wanted to be I felt like this was settling into being quite a decent and off-kilter sitcom – set aboard a luxury space cruiser stranded in space after an accident, it managed to explore topics & plots that weren’t just the obvious tropes of that genre. Some really great comic constructions (e.g. the brown sewer pipe causing a cloud of excrement to orbit the body of the ship, which was mitigated by projecting a light show on to, culminating in people saying that they could see the face of The Pope in the cloud, and crowds of passengers staring out the window to see if THEY could spot The Shitpope). Once the show hit its rhythm the writers upped their swearing game as well, and the characters really started to evolve and the layers of bizarreness build up. I found myself thinking it a real shame that the show was cancelled after 2 seasons. I can see why, but equally I’d have loved to have seen much more of this. 👍