Comedy series ‘Welcome to Sweden’ only mildly amusing

May 22, 2015 | G. Michael Dobbs
news@thereminder.com

Reminder Publications submitted photo

This week I’ll look at a forgotten TV series from the 1970s and a new series, which may have escaped your notice.

On DVD: Welcome to Sweden

In real life Greg Poehler – the brother of comic actress Amy Poehler – is a lawyer who graduated from Fordham University School of Law and then Stockholm University with a graduate degree in European Intellectual Property Law.

He met and married a Swedish lawyer and then moved to Sweden where the couple worked for over a decade.

He started doing stand-up comedy in Sweden and began working on a script for a series based on his experiences as a fish out of water. His sister decided to produce it and the show has run both on NBC in the country and on Swedish TV.

The show is shot in both English and Swedish and if subtitles bother you then watching it may be a challenge.

Poehler stars in the show and is an acceptable lead. He clearly understands that his character can’t be too flashy, as the supporting cast who plays his Swedish in-laws (Lena Olin as his mother-in-law and Claes Mansson as his father-in-law)  are eccentric enough.

Although I found the show mildly amusing, after a while I couldn’t help but wonder what his Swedish girlfriend (Josephine Bournebusch) sees in him. He’s sort of social klutz and doesn’t seem really prepared for the changes that would come from moving to a foreign country.

The DVD is not censored, so there are profanities that were acceptable on Swedish television that had to be changed for broadcast here.

A second season is being shot and perhaps it will be funnier.

CPO Sharkey: Season One

I only dimly remembered this sitcom starring Don Rickles when it was first broadcasted in 1976, but now anyone interested in his career will have the opportunity of seeing it.

While Rickles has become a beloved American comic icon and an effective character actor, he did not have great success with standard network television offerings. He had his own variety show, which lasted one season and a sitcom that ran only 13 weeks. “CPO Sharkey” had a two season run, and could be seen as his most successful conventional television show.

Rickles is a Navy vet of World War II and in interviews he thought the subject matter and character fit his own personality and experiences.

Sharkey is a long-time Navy man who is married to the service. He is in charge of green recruits at a base in San Diego and while he has the Rickles wit, the character is actually quite warm at times.

The DVD liner notes has a warning about the potentially politically incorrect ethnic humor in the series, but frankly compared to what is broadcast today, this is pretty mild stuff.

Although I’m a Rickles fan, I didn’t expect much from this scripted series. So much of Rickles’ humor comes out of his ad-libs, but I found myself laughing quite often. Whether planned or not, many of the lines are delivered in the same style of his ad-libs and they work well.

The bonus accompanying this collection is the famous incident in which Johnny Carson, discovers during the course of a taping of his show, that Rickles had broken his cigarette box on his desk. Taking a camera crew with him, Carson walks down the hall to the studio in which Rickles was taping his show and interrupts him. It’s a funny moment.

“CPO Sharkey” is well worth discovering or re-discovering.        

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