La La Land is blah blah

    British comic Marc Wootton has done what is basically Borat: The Series for Showtime.  Called La La Land, it premiered this past Monday.  Wootton portrays three different characters, two with an assistant, who interact with real people and films it.  Each character is not the least bit likable, and considering that Sacha Baron Cohen has already done it in a series and two movies, it feels stale.  The show has the same type of shock and gross out humor Cohen did.  All in all, a disappointment.

     The first character Wootton plays is a documentary filmmaker named Branden who looks a bit like a skinnier Michael Moore.  His brilliant idea in the pilot is to build a camera that can film underwater, go down in a cage, and record sharks.  He argues and argues with a producer that he is the first to think of the idea, which any sane person knows is far from the truth.  The second is an aspiring actor named Gary, whose porn-star mother told him from her death bed that he needed to try show business.  He has brought his mother's ashes with him.  Again, he acts completely idiotic, even clashing with the guy who is supposed to take his head shot.

     Finally, the third character is one Wootton already did on British televison: Shirley Ghostman.  Shirley has poofy hair and painted fingers, but is a man, and is not gay, as he angrily asserts.  He is a psychic who can talk to dead people and hypnotize others, but clearly has no talent anyone would buy into.  Shirley supposedly has a warrant for his arrest in England after he told a couple that their kidnapped child was dead, and then the child turned up.  Thank god that wasn't a sketch, or the low-class show would have been even worse.

     If you're looking for people getting the wool pulled over their eyes by an imbecile in a costume, acting like a complete jerk, watch the movie Borat, which I admit was very funny.  However, this show is not worth anyone's time.  La La Land airs on Showtime Mondays at 11pm.