What’s On
By George Vernadakis -- Multichannel News, 8/5/2007 8:00:00 PM
CALIFORNICATION
Showtime • Mon, Aug. 13 (10:30 p.m.)
Call it The Sex Files. Showtime has lured David Duchovny back to television as star and executive producer of a raunchy comedy titled Californication. As its title suggests, this smug and obvious series relishes the “for mature audiences” license that pay TV affords, but parades its amorality in ways that are decidedly immature.
Duchovny is Hank Moody, a gifted writer whose novel has been turned into a big-screen vehicle for Mr. and Mrs. Tom Cruise. Having sold his soul to Hollywood, moody Hank puts down his pen and beds down with every woman he meets.
All of which will sound familiar to anyone who happened to see a 1989 Blake Edwards comedy called Skin Deep, in which John Ritter played an L.A. author named Zach who drowns his writer’s block in booze and sex.
Complicating matters for Hank are his ex-girlfriend, who’s about to remarry, and their coming-of-age daughter — both of whom he loves dearly, but neither of whom can stop him from having naughty fantasies involving nuns or jumping in the sack with underage strangers.
Judging from the first episode — the only one provided for review — it’s hard to imagine where Californication will go other than in circles: Hank is sad. Hank is sarcastic. Hank has sex. Repeat.
Viewers are clearly meant to root for its self-destructive anti-hero because he pulls no punches, sometimes literally — in one less-than-credible scene, he pummels a movie-theater patron for talking on his cellphone. But rooting for Hank would be like patting a child on the head for discovering the F-word.
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