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Rating 5
Created by Bryan Fuller
Written by Bridget Carpenter (5 episodes), Dan Fesman (3 episodes), Bryan Fuller (2 episodes), Karl Gajdusek (4 episodes), Stephen Godchaux (14 episodes), Paul Lieberstein (1 episodes), Mona Mansour (1 episodes), John Masius (7 episodes), Anna C Miller (1 episodes), Pete Ocko (3 episodes), J J Philbin (2 episodes), Tom Spezialy (1 episode), Ian Thomas (1 episode), Harry Victor (3 episodes), Annie Weismen (4 episodes)
Directed by Sarah Pia Anderson (2 episodes), Steve Beers (2 episodes), Milan Cheyluv (1 episode), Kevin Dowling (2 episodes), Michael Fresco (1 episode), David Grossman (4 episodes), Peter Lauer (4 episodes), James Marshall (1 episode), Robert Duncan McNeill (2 episode), Helen Shaver (1 episode), David Straiton (1 episode), Brad Turner (1 episode), Tony Westman (1 episode), James Whitmore Jr (4 episodes), Scott Winant (1 episode), Jeff Woolnough (1 episode)
Starring Ellen Muth, Mandy Patinkin, Cynthia Stevenson, Jasmine Guy, Callum Blue, Rebecca Gayheart, Laura Harris, Britt McKillip, Christine Willes, Greg Kean and Crystal Dahl
Georgia ‘George’ Lass (Ellen Muth) is a disaffected and cynical 18-year-old who stays on the sidelines, refusing to participate so as to avoid disappointment. When she drops out of college she is forced to look for a job by her mother Joy (brilliantly played by Cynthia Stevenson) and ends up at Happy Time, a temporary employment agency, where she is given a menial office task by Dolores Herbig (Christine Willes). However, when George is killed in a freak accident involving a toilet seat on her first day she becomes a grim reaper, part of a group of five reapers led by Rube Sofer (Mandy Patinkin) responsible for reaping the souls of people killed in accidents and at the hands of others.
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‘Dead Like Me’ was broadcast in the US for two seasons and a total of 29 episodes on the Showtime subscription television channel between 27 June 2003 and 31 October 2004. It was created by Bryan Fuller, who had previously been a writer on ‘Star Trek Deep Space Nine’ and ‘Star Trek Voyager’. He went on to create the short-lived ‘Wonderfalls’ (in collaboration with Todd Holland) and ‘Pushing Daisies’, as well as working as a consulting producer and writer during the first season of ‘Heroes’. Fuller wrote the first two episodes of ‘Dead Like Me’, but left after five episodes due to conflicts with MGM Television, the company that produced the show. He described the period as “the worst experience of my life,” although he continued to receive a credit as a consultant. The creative direction was subsequently dictated by John Masius (the show’s executive producer) and Stephen Godchaux, its most prolific writer.
The show is brilliantly executed, from the memorable opening credits onwards. It takes the simple premise of life explored through death (George does not really begin to live until she is dead) and produces a near-perfect mix of black comedy and poignant drama, set against a supernatural theme. It follows George’s journey as she slowly begins to understand what life really means; both through her reminiscences about her parents and younger sister and through her relationship with the people she meets in death, including the two people who become almost surrogate parents to her, Rube and Dolores. Even in death, George is required to deal with the mundane matters of life and in the guise of “Millie” she once again ends up working at Happy Time.
The standard of writing throughout is extremely high and the cast is superb, bringing life to several memorable characters. Rebecca Gayheart was cast as one of the original reapers, the 1920s flapper Betty Rohmer. However, Betty was written out the show after five episodes and Gayheart was replaced by the actress Laura Harris, playing Daisy Adair, a would-be Hollywood starlet who claims to have died in a fire on the set of ‘Gone With The Wind’ in 1938. I don’t know the reason why Gayheart left the show, although I guess it could have been connected to the departure of Bryan Fuller. She did have, at that time, seemingly, a rather chaotic life and in 2002 had been dropped from the main cast of the television series ‘Firefly’ after just one day of filming. She was replaced on that occasion by Morena Baccarin. Fans of that show would not agree with me, but I think it would have benefited greatly from the presence of Gayheart, who would surely have given us something more spirited than Baccarin’s depressingly bland performance.
I like Rebecca Gayheart a lot and also like the character Betty, so her early departure was initially disappointing. However, Daisy Adair proved to be one of the show’s great characters. I was previously aware of Laura Harris from the Robert Rodriguez film ‘The Faculty’ and from an episode of ‘The X Files’. Her performance here is outstanding, as we slowly learn more about the very sad and poignant nature of her character, which she carefully hides beneath a brazen and self-absorbed exterior.
This is just one of several really outstanding performances. The character I found perhaps most interesting is Joy Lass, George’s mother, played by Cynthia Stevenson, who once again is not what she seems on the surface. Dolores Herbig is also worthy of mention; George’s seemingly annoying manager at work who proves to be very kind-hearted and acts as a mentor/mother figure to her. Dolores is played by Christine Willes, who has subsequently featured in a recurring role in the television series ‘Reaper’. The actor and singer Mandy Patinkin is always very watchable and Rube Sofer is another particularly noteworthy character, his relationship with George and the other reapers being one of the many joys to had watching the series.
The show’s most overtly comic character is the constantly hapless Mason (Callum Blue), a 1960s alcohol and drug addicted drop-out who killed himself drilling a hole in his skull in search of the ultimate high.
There is a notable shift in emphasis between the first and second seasons. Season one is more comedy-attuned and irreverent, whereas season two begins to delve more deeply into the lives of the various characters, for example exploring the relationship between Joy Lass and her daughter Reggie (Britt McKillip), George’s younger sister. As a result, I think, having watched the series in its entirety three times, it’s a more interesting season, as much as I like the first one. It contains several memorable and heartrending moments, such as the scene in the episode ‘Rites of Passage’ when George’s free-spirited grandmother Phyllis (beautifully played by Barbara Barrie) holds a small framed photograph of her grand-daughter up to her chest, tears in her eyes, or in ‘Always’ when Rube sings a lullaby to his daughter Rosie, now a elderly woman, in the final moments of her life. There are also scenes that leave a powerful impression, such as one in the episode ‘Be Still My Heart’ that sees Daisy crouching down, terrified, in a hotel room closet while the young woman whose soul she has come to reap is brutally strangled by her married lover.
The second season is also notable for an appearance in three episodes by Eric McCormack, playing a distinctly unpleasant character quite unlike his signature role in the long-running sitcom ‘Will and Grace’. I should not, of course, forget to mention Ellen Muth, who is perfectly cast in the lead role as George Lass, although I can never quite get over how scarily skinny she is. Muth, who apparently has an unusually high IQ and is a member of both Mensa and Intertel, made her acting debut in the 1995 film ‘Dolores Claiborne’ when she was 14-years-old, receiving many positive reviews for her performance.
My only criticisms of the series are two very minor quibbles. In ‘Reaping Havoc’, the fifth episode of the first season, an Irishman who dies goes into the light when he sees the white cliffs of Dover, which are to be found on the south coast of England and would have no emotional pull whatsoever for someone from Ireland. The storyline required cliffs, but this is cringe-worthy. In ‘A Cook’, the eighth episode of season one, Mandy Patinkin adopts a Scottish accent that is so awful it is embarrassing, worse even than the typically dreadful Irish accents that so many American actors seem to feel the need to adopt at least once in their acting careers.
Accurate data about viewing figures for the show are not available. It has been claimed that it was watched by an audience three times the Showtime primetime average; although there is no evidence I know of to back this up. Whatever the truth, Showtime decided not to commission a third season. However, a direct-to-DVD film version was released in the US in February 2009. It was written by John Masius and Stephen Godchaux and reunited several of the cast from the television series, although Mandy Patinkin, Laura Harris and Greg Kean, who played George’s father, Clancy, are absent. The film was directed by Stephen Herek, whose previous films include ‘Critters’, ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ and the live-action version of ‘101 Dalmatians’.
Review posted 21 March 2009
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Rating 2
Directed by Armand Mastroianni
Written by Rockne S O’Bannon, from a story by Robin Cook
Starring Luke Perry, Kim Cattrall, Rebecca Gayheart, Christopher Orr, Jon Polito and Rosana DeSoto
An extraterrestrial virus crashes through the atmosphere in the form of tiny rocks that survive the intense heat and fall to earth. The virus spreads through the population of Earth at a rapid pace, changing people into an alien life form intent on colonising the planet. A small band of human dissidents, immune to the virus, fight against time to find an antidote to it.
This made-for-television sci-fi mini-series was first broadcast in three one-hour episodes, including advertising breaks, in 1997, although the version I watched on DVD has a running time of 122 minutes, which suggests some cuts have been made.
Blatantly ripped-off from ‘Invasion Of The Body Snatchers’, this really is hilariously bad on so many levels, not least the hysterical performance of Luke Perry, who is in ultra-smug mode throughout (I say this as someone who harbours a soft-spot for Perry). The other actors fare little better. Rebecca Gayheart seems defeated by the mediocre material she is given to work with, although I am too fond of her to be overly critical. The worst performance of the lot comes from Rosana DeSoto (of ‘La Bamba’ fame), who still received an ALMA Award nomination.
Having said this, it is still fun to watch if you like this sort of thing, which I certainly do, even if the climax carries all the drama and excitement of a wet weekend in a caravan.
Robin Cook wrote the novel ‘Coma’, which was turned into a screenplay by Michael Crichton for the 1978 film of the same name.
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Rating 3
Written and directed by Darren Stein
Starring Rose McGowan, Rebecca Gayheart, Julie Benz, Judy Greer, Ethan Erickson and Pam Grier
The DVD of this film cost me 39p. That’s about 80 cents for anyone from America who happens to stumble across this site. I bought it largely because of the cast – Rebecca Gayheart and Julie Benz in particular – and also because the possibility of a film that compares favourably to the excellent ‘Mean Girls’ appealed to me.
Having watched it, I immediately watched it again.
The story is simple enough, revolving around a clique of mean girls, an accidental death and the fall out that follows the attempt to cover up the circumstances behind the death. Gayheart, Benz and Rose McGowan are great fun in the central roles – and it doesn’t seem to matter that they are all about ten years older than the characters they are playing. In fact, that just adds to the fun.
The whole cast rises to the occasion. The inclusion of Jeff Conaway (Kenickie in ‘Grease’), P J Soles (from ‘Carrie’, ‘Halloween’ and ‘Rock & Roll High School’) and Marilyn Manson in cameo roles is a nice touch. The film is dark and funny and the depths (or heights, if you prefer) to which the mean and spiteful behaviour spirals seems to have no limits.
The film has been compared to ‘Heathers’ and ‘Carrie’, as well as the likes of ‘Clueless’ and ‘Mean Girls’, but the 56 reviews collected at Rotten Tomatoes result in a dreadful 7% rating, which amazes me. I think this is a great little film and for anyone who like any or all of the films mentioned it is definitely worth checking out.
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Rating 4
Written and directed by James Toback
Starring Adrien Grenier, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Joey Lauren Adams, Eric Stoltz, Rebecca Gayheart and John Neville
“The money to make ‘Harvard Man’ came into place after she came aboard, but not once did she try to exploit her centrality to the financing of the movie. A lot of times in cases like this, actors will be quick to point out on the first day of shooting that they’re the reason the film got financing and that it’s their show... Not so with Sarah, and she was well aware that she was the deciding factor in getting the film’s $6 million budget approved.”
James Toback
“I made ‘Harvard Man’ for personal reasons. I wanted to challenge myself; I wanted to work with Jim. And I had a great time.”
Sarah Michelle Gellar
James Toback is a New York-based independent filmmaker whose first film (as a scriptwriter) was made in 1974. He has subsequently followed an erratic career as a writer and director. His single brush with the mainstream was his script for ‘Bugsy’, but he is probably most celebrated for his collaborations with the electrifying actor Robert Downey Jr on films such as ‘The Pick-up Artist’ and ‘Black and White’. Toback has his supporters, but he has never really been a consistent critics’ favourite and much of his career has been pursued in semi-obscurity.
Sarah Michelle Gellar is a fan of his films. Allegedly against the advice of her agent, she helped to resurrect ‘Harvard Man’, a surreal autobiographical film script that was once given the green light with Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role. When DiCaprio pulled out, having been cast in ‘Titanic’, the film was shelved.
Toback, who has been described as a compulsive gambler, a theme of several of his films, and once taught English at the City College of New York, loosely based the script on his experiences in the mid 1960’s when he was studying at Harvard for a degree in philosophy. Specifically, it is based on his drug experimentation. He suffered a severe psychotic episode after ingesting a huge quantity of LSD to find out what would happen. Into this autobiographical theme, he adds a surreal subplot about a tornado in Kansas (the reference to ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is obvious), promiscuous sexual behaviour, illegal gambling, the fixing of a college basketball game, and various shenanigans involving the FBI and the Mafia. Gellar plays Cindy Bandolini, the dangerously amoral daughter of a notorious Mafia boss.
The film was finally released in America in May 2002, one month prior to the release of the first ‘Scooby Doo’ film, and had a box office gross of just over $56,000. It remains, in my opinion, possibly the best film Gellar has made to date.
“For me, it wasn't kinky, it was awkward. Jim’s movies are sexually free… but he never asked me to push the line. He was always incredibly respectful. I’m not in a place where I’m comfortable doing nudity… What’s sexy is when sex is left to the imagination. I love when it’s implied. I roll my eyes and yawn at gratuitous sex.”
Sarah Michelle Gellar
The actual plot is outrageously far-fetched, but it doesn’t purport to be anything else and is filmed with all the usual Toback trademarks: eccentric editing, split-screen multi-scenes, uneven pacing, sketchy characterisation, weird story structuring and bizarre dialogue centred around philosophical discourse. It’s what happens after the plot has been established that is really surreal. The film begins to concentrate on Alan’s (the lead character based on Toback) acid trip.
The world as he sees it becomes a nightmare of melting faces, figures walking out of paintings and becoming real and constant swirling voices in his head that multiply and grow into an unbearable cacophony of sound. While this happens, the existing plot continues to unfold. He is being pursued by the FBI, two comical Mafia hitmen, Cindy (Gellar) and Chesney (his philosophy lecturer and lover). Everything is strange and fragmented, intended to heighten and emphasise Alan’s descent into drug-induced temporary insanity.
Toback seems to have deliberately cast the film with several actors who are unsuited to their roles – and he provides them with idiosyncratic personality traits and places them in entirely implausible scenarios. For instance, Joey Lauren Adams is not the first person you might think of to play a philosophy lecturer at Harvard University and Sarah Michelle Gellar doesn’t immediately come to mind as perfect casting for the daughter of a Mafia boss. To emphasise this even more, Toback cast Gianni Russo, who appeared in the first two ‘Godfather’ films, as her father. Eric Stoltz and Rebecca Gayheart are the most unlikely FBI agents this side of David Duchovny’s transvestite character in ‘Twin Peaks’ and the jittery Adrian Grenier doesn’t exactly have an obvious physique for a star basketball player, even at college level.
Many film critics were hostile towards the film and pointed to the casting as evidence that Toback is a hopeless and wilful incompetent. Others applauded him for the bravery of his casting, observing that it worked to the advantage of the film because it confounds the expectations of the audience and is suited to the surreal and improbable scenario into which the characters had been placed.
I think ‘Harvard Man’ is genuinely a quite brilliant film, although I fully appreciate that it would not be to all tastes. As I’ve already mentioned, it is probably the best film Gellar has made so far, although not necessarily my favourite. However, I have watched it on half-a-dozen occasions and I continue to come away impressed every time....
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Rating 3
Directed by Wes Craven
Written by Kevin Williamson
Starring Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courtney Cox, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Rebecca Gayheart and Portia de Rossi
“I didn’t have to push very hard because we fell in love with her, too. It’s a juicy little part and she’s rocking. I want her in every one of my movies because you know when you hire her to do a job she’s not going to be in her trailer complaining about everything. She’s going to be right out there giving you the tenth take in the freezing cold.”
Kevin Williamson (talking about Sarah Michelle Gellar)
‘Scream 2’ was released in America in December 1997 and took $172 million at the box office, making it the fourteenth biggest box office hit of the year. Sarah Michelle Gellar comes in for quite a lot of criticism online and her films are often alleged to have been flops, commercially as well as artistically. I fully accept that the box office success of a film is no indication of its artistic worth but I’m just putting the record straight.
Gellar is not a big star and I have serious doubts that she will ever join the ranks of the so-called Hollywood ‘A-list’. However, overall she actually has one of the best box office records of any female actor working in Hollywood at the moment. Having said that, I appreciate that she is not the actual reason why films like ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ and ‘Scream 2’ were successful at the box office. She does bring a fanbase with her, but she is certainly not the over-riding factor when assessing the box-office performance of genre films like this; films that already have a built-in audience. In any case, at the time these films were made Neve Campbell and Jennifer Love Hewitt were undoubtedly equally well known and popular.
Gellar’s role in ‘Scream 2’, playing Casey ‘Cici’ Cooper, is a small one, but it’s also one of the highlights of the film. I like it but I do think it’s just a bit too knowingly clever-clever at times. For me, it’s not close to being as good as the first film, which, of course, has the added attraction of Drew Barrymore, who I have a great deal of time for, and a rollicking, over-the-top performance by the wonderful Matthew Lillard....
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Rating 3
Directed by Jamie Blanks
Written by Silvio Horta
Starring Alicia Witt, Rebecca Gayheart, Jared Leto, Tara Reid, Joshua Jackson, Natasha Gregson Wagner and Loretta Devine
Horror films, certainly those being made by the mainstream Hollywood studios now for a largely teenage audience, are frequently approached with hostile distain by mainstream critics. The hardcore horror film fanbase can often be even more hostile, but for them instead of simply being suspicious of all horror films it becomes increasingly about personalities and sub-genres. For example, the emergence of “torture-porn” was partly a reaction to the glut of Hollywood remakes of “J-Horror” films, which were dismissed (offensively, I think) as, “Horror films for teenage girls that don’t like horror films.”
‘Urban Legend’ is the product of a studio looking to cash in on the success of ‘Scream’ and its immediate successors, ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ and ‘Scream 2’, three films that grossed more than $471 million between them at the box office. It could be argued that because ‘Scream’ already existed (and, indeed, John Carpenter’s timeless 1978 masterpiece ‘Halloween’, surely the most influential horror film of the last 30 years) there was no need to make a film like ‘Urban Legend’, except as a purely cynical moneymaking exercise.
Whatever the reasons behind the making of this film, it is one of my favourite horror films. Based on the number of times I must have watched it now, I could probably put it into my top five. Set in an isolated university, a group of friends are menaced by a series of sinister and suspicious deaths, each one appearing to match an urban legend.
The film was written by Silvio Horta, who is now the executive producer of ‘Ugly Betty’. It was directed by Jamie Blanks, who doesn’t seem to have done anything else of much note, except the rather horrible David Boreanaz and Denise Richards horror flick ‘Valentine’, although it was he who originally pitched the idea for ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ and filmed a promotional demo trailer prior to the directing duties being passed to Jim Gillespie.
It has a cast of young actors who were starting to make waves, mainly on television, many of them popular teen pin-ups at the time:
Alicia Witt had just spent three seasons and 87 episodes in the sit-com ‘Cybill’.
Jared Leto came from the short-lived but highly praised ‘My So-Called Life’.
Rebecca Gayheart had featured in eight episodes of the sixth season of ‘Beverly Hills 90210’ and more recently had a supporting role in ‘Scream 2’.
Joshua Jackson had also made an appearance in ‘Scream 2’ and was on his way to ‘Cruel Intentions’ and a lead role in ‘Dawson’s Creek’.
Tara Reid is probably better known as an early example of the new breed of Hollywood “hellcats”, but she came to this film on the back of her role as Bunny Lebowski in ‘The Big Lebowski’ and went on to feature in ‘Cruel Intentions’.
Michael Rosenbaum ended up with one of the lead roles in ‘Smallville’ and has now appeared in 140 plus episodes of that TV show.
Natasha Gregson Wagner, whose brief appearance at the beginning of the film (memorably singing along to ‘Total Eclipse Of The Heart’) mirrors that of Drew Barrymore in ‘Scream’, is the daughter of Natalie Wood. Her film debut was in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’.
Added to this was some clever casting among the older supporting actors. John Neville had played the title role in Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Adventures of Baron Munchausen’ and was familiar from a recurring role in ‘The X Files’. Robert Englund, playing one of the college professors, was a nice piece of casting for horror film fans.
The film is almost stolen by Loretta Devine, playing an eager squeaky-voiced campus security officer who dreams of being like Foxy Brown and ends up getting her chance to be just that.
The film grossed $72.5 million worldwide against a production budget of $14 million. A sequel, ‘Urban Legends: Final Cut’, was released in 2000, achieving a $39 million worldwide gross. Only Loretta Devine from the original cast returned for this film. A direct-to-DVD third instalment, ‘Urban Legends: Bloody Mary’, appeared in 2005. I have not seen either of these films....
Created by Bryan Fuller
Georgia ‘George’ Lass (Ellen Muth) is a disaffected and cynical 18-year-old who stays on the sidelines, refusing to participate so as to avoid disappointment. When she drops out of college she is forced to look for a job by her mother Joy (brilliantly played by Cynthia Stevenson) and ends up at Happy Time, a temporary employment agency, where she is given a menial office task by Dolores Herbig (Christine Willes). However, when George is killed in a freak accident involving a toilet seat on her first day she becomes a grim reaper, part of a group of five reapers led by Rube Sofer (Mandy Patinkin) responsible for reaping the souls of people killed in accidents and at the hands of others.
‘Dead Like Me’ was broadcast in the US for two seasons and a total of 29 episodes on the Showtime subscription television channel between 27 June 2003 and 31 October 2004. It was created by Bryan Fuller, who had previously been a writer on ‘Star Trek Deep Space Nine’ and ‘Star Trek Voyager’. He went on to create the short-lived ‘Wonderfalls’ (in collaboration with Todd Holland) and ‘Pushing Daisies’, as well as working as a consulting producer and writer during the first season of ‘Heroes’. Fuller wrote the first two episodes of ‘Dead Like Me’, but left after five episodes due to conflicts with MGM Television, the company that produced the show. He described the period as “the worst experience of my life,” although he continued to receive a credit as a consultant. The creative direction was subsequently dictated by John Masius (the show’s executive producer) and Stephen Godchaux, its most prolific writer.
The standard of writing throughout is extremely high and the cast is superb, bringing life to several memorable characters. Rebecca Gayheart was cast as one of the original reapers, the 1920s flapper Betty Rohmer. However, Betty was written out the show after five episodes and Gayheart was replaced by the actress Laura Harris, playing Daisy Adair, a would-be Hollywood starlet who claims to have died in a fire on the set of ‘Gone With The Wind’ in 1938. I don’t know the reason why Gayheart left the show, although I guess it could have been connected to the departure of Bryan Fuller. She did have, at that time, seemingly, a rather chaotic life and in 2002 had been dropped from the main cast of the television series ‘Firefly’ after just one day of filming. She was replaced on that occasion by Morena Baccarin. Fans of that show would not agree with me, but I think it would have benefited greatly from the presence of Gayheart, who would surely have given us something more spirited than Baccarin’s depressingly bland performance.
I like Rebecca Gayheart a lot and also like the character Betty, so her early departure was initially disappointing. However, Daisy Adair proved to be one of the show’s great characters. I was previously aware of Laura Harris from the Robert Rodriguez film ‘The Faculty’ and from an episode of ‘The X Files’. Her performance here is outstanding, as we slowly learn more about the very sad and poignant nature of her character, which she carefully hides beneath a brazen and self-absorbed exterior.
There is a notable shift in emphasis between the first and second seasons. Season one is more comedy-attuned and irreverent, whereas season two begins to delve more deeply into the lives of the various characters, for example exploring the relationship between Joy Lass and her daughter Reggie (Britt McKillip), George’s younger sister. As a result, I think, having watched the series in its entirety three times, it’s a more interesting season, as much as I like the first one. It contains several memorable and heartrending moments, such as the scene in the episode ‘Rites of Passage’ when George’s free-spirited grandmother Phyllis (beautifully played by Barbara Barrie) holds a small framed photograph of her grand-daughter up to her chest, tears in her eyes, or in ‘Always’ when Rube sings a lullaby to his daughter Rosie, now a elderly woman, in the final moments of her life. There are also scenes that leave a powerful impression, such as one in the episode ‘Be Still My Heart’ that sees Daisy crouching down, terrified, in a hotel room closet while the young woman whose soul she has come to reap is brutally strangled by her married lover.
The second season is also notable for an appearance in three episodes by Eric McCormack, playing a distinctly unpleasant character quite unlike his signature role in the long-running sitcom ‘Will and Grace’. I should not, of course, forget to mention Ellen Muth, who is perfectly cast in the lead role as George Lass, although I can never quite get over how scarily skinny she is. Muth, who apparently has an unusually high IQ and is a member of both Mensa and Intertel, made her acting debut in the 1995 film ‘Dolores Claiborne’ when she was 14-years-old, receiving many positive reviews for her performance.
Accurate data about viewing figures for the show are not available. It has been claimed that it was watched by an audience three times the Showtime primetime average; although there is no evidence I know of to back this up. Whatever the truth, Showtime decided not to commission a third season. However, a direct-to-DVD film version was released in the US in February 2009. It was written by John Masius and Stephen Godchaux and reunited several of the cast from the television series, although Mandy Patinkin, Laura Harris and Greg Kean, who played George’s father, Clancy, are absent. The film was directed by Stephen Herek, whose previous films include ‘Critters’, ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ and the live-action version of ‘101 Dalmatians’.
