I particularly enjoyed great performances from many talented actors especially Tuc Watkins and am looking forward to seeing the whole series again. Any new release on DVD would be welcome. This series is definitely worth a watch if you have a sense of humor and not necessarily into sitcoms but a more subtle type of humor. The series deepens in perspective in the next season and maintains it's original appeal. What a pity it ended so soon. More of this type of comedy drama is needed on TV. Subsequent seasons have great additions to the cast which keep the story fresh. I also liked very much a quirky opening credit and theme tune.
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marktadford22 August 2006
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Mixed up sperm and Russian gangsters aside (and every satire from Jonathan Swift to Arrested Development needs its exaggerations) B&C is pretty accurate about the angst- ridden life of TV execs in LA- believe me, I know, I have been there.
The swearing, if anything, is underdone - there are many places in America where cuss words are reserved for special occasions, but not in the Marines, the police or TV network head offices. The back-stabbing and social competition, too, is more prevalent than on, say, a Kentucky farm or at a Sunday morning bake sale, even on a Sunday morning.
Which, as one commentator wisely said, is maybe why this (and, lets be honest, HBO"s brilliant Larry Sanders) did not travel far beyond its natural constituency - LA and its media buddies in New York and London, and a few college grads, freaks and geeks aware enough to appreciate that all offices share the touch of evil. The same people who can watch either the BBC original of the NBC remake of The Office and recognize it as a kind of everyday life.
But TV-land is a degree nastier than working for a paper products firm because it's driven by the fear of 99% unemployment and the final one percent skilled/lucky.insane enough to have a job, being paid $250,000 a year plus, will do everything short of murder to hold onto that. Few would do that for a job paying minimum wage.
Anyway, hey, we got two fun-filled seasons out of this, which I suspect actually made no economic sense. I would guess B&C getting picked up for a second series was all about Showtime execs enjoying the in-jokes and critical kudos rather than the audience numbers. maybe it has a protector on a higher board which kept it alive longer than it would have survived on basic cable or mainstream TV.
PS The Showtime premium cable channel is almost HBO, but, somehow, routinely manages to lose its grip on some great novel programming- Dead Like Me, like B&C RIP after two series, Kistie Alley's Fat Actress (opened big and brave, shrinking faster than she is), etc.
Showtime, right now, is the almost brilliant channel, that may one day be a lesson taught in business schools.
PPS - Also Beggars and Choosers was and remains funny. And that is tough to get right. -
My wife and i watched the entire series and loved it! We thought it was funny, smart and very well cast! Many TV sitcoms don't necessarily work for us,but this one certainly did. Fortunately I was able to tape many of the episodes and subsequently transfer them to DVDs, but we were ultimately disappointed that the show never made it to commercial DVDs!
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torontononna3 July 2005If a DVD was available, I'd buy the whole set in a heartbeat. I have some of the episodes on VHS, complete with commercials, and too hard to locate on my tapes. Plus they aren't in order! I am not in "the business" but I found the satire clever and funny, the acting terrific, and the whole thing strangely both believable and outrageous. I think the biggest problem with the show, during its original run, was that there was so little marketing for it. I found it by accident and thought it sounded interesting, so I watched the first episode, and was hooked immediately. Most of my friends had never heard of it, until I told them about it. Maybe if there had been more hype, more people would have watched it. Also, in my area (Toronto) it was only on TV once a week, Friday nights at midnight. A lot of the audience who would enjoy this show are out on Friday nights.
Anyway, I was devastated when it was cancelled. Special favourite performances were from Lori, Malcolm, Larry the drag queen, and Brad, plus of course Rob and Cecile. Also Mr. Ludden and the fabulous Lydia Ludden.
Some favourite moments were when Mr. Ludden came out of his coma, when Parker Meridien died, when Kendall was getting people to throw out their TVs. And who could forget Lori and the Russian mobster.
I really hope a DVD comes out before the show becomes a pile of archival garbage in Showtime's back storage room. -
JBoze3131 October 2000Now, I don't know much about how t.v. networks run and the people who work there, but I have a feeling it's a lot like Beggars and Choosers! From Rob Malone, network president, down to Lori Volpone, vice president of development-- the characters are both smart and funny. The series gives you an inside view of how a network runs, and how everyone working there deals with the trials and tribulations of life on the inside.
Inside of this little fictional network, LGT, you see that it's very disfunctional, in a way that most could never imagine. Everyone and their brother are busy backstabbing everyone outside of the network to get ahead in the network, and doing everything they can think of to everyone outside of the network to get the network ahead as a team. Make sense? Maybe not...but it's network television, who said it made sense. All you have to know is this: the characters are funny, the acting is above top notch, and the storylines will keep you glued to the set every week. The show has a good way of keeping you involved...you're always hoping the network pulls thru and their ratings go up, and you find yourself hoping that the people trying to keep this from happening lose, and in the end, they usually do. You can't help but watch, and when you do, you can't help but stay by the t.v. till it's all over and the problems have been resolved. It's a great show with an awesome cast, and if you wanna get into the business, it might be a good learning tool as well. If you haven't seen the show already, watch it, it tends to grow on you. -
katherinef11 March 2000(Contains spoilers)
I *love* Beggars and Choosers. I love it to bits and pieces. The Irish TV station, Network 2, shows it on Friday nights (when it feels like it and there aren't too many sunspots or a vital tiddleywinks match), usually after midnight, and even though I'm always exhausted by Friday night I never miss it. How could I live without my weekly fix of Rob Malone, the only good man in Hollywood? Not to mention Brad, the whore of an agent; Yolanda, the actress with Tourette's Syndrome; Lori "the fox" Volpone, as ruthless as she is beautiful, and the Russian gangster Nicky Krasnikov who wears down her resistance with poetry and smouldering looks (oh, and killing people who threaten her); Malcolm, the VP of Talent who dithers about coming out and finally does it on national television. . .not to mention the two characters whose sole purpose is to be in the restaurants when the others are eating lunch and make phone calls about who's eating with who. ..
Beggars and Choosers is a television show about television, and the gloves are definitely off. I'm frankly amazed that it got made at all, it's so scathing about the business. Rob Malone (boss of the fictional LGT network) at one point says that television is "sh***y"; and he's the only one who cares. Everybody else is out for themselves and only themselves. They don't care who they have to stab in the back to push themselves ahead.
And yet even the scummiest of the characters have real motivations. Even though we *know* Lori Volpone is a workaholic megabitch who'd sell her own mother if it would get her the credit for a #1 Neilsen-rated show, it's impossible not to see through her eyes as she is gradually seduced by Krasnikov -- and even though Krasnikov is a ruthless killer, he is so honest, so straightforward, so undeniably *real*, that after the phoniness of Hollywood he comes as a breath of sweet, fresh air. Brad spends twenty minutes choosing socks, on the grounds that each pair of socks represents a different career track, and the scene is ludicrous yet at the same time logical; it's quite possible that the wrong socks *will* cripple his career, and his willingness to pay such attention to detail is what gives him the edge over the others.
Beggars and Choosers is hugely funny, audacious, and sharp; but it's also surprisingly warm. Through all the back-stabbing and lies, the characters remain likeable as well as fascinating. I hope it runs for a long time. -
grow-it30 March 2003I loved this series, I wish some one would put out video's for sale. this series could go on for ever. Rudolf Martin playing as Nicolai Krasnikove is forever great. Why did this show just stop? I hear it had low ratings, bull It way the best mini showtime had or has on! or give people a chance to own it.
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gross-126 March 2005I watched one of these shows on a VHS cassette that I found at a thrift store. I liked the energy of the cast, and thought that the idea of a behind the scenes look at a TV network had potential, but found that the attempt to parody the network TV selection process itself came across as insensitive at times. As with many Showtime and HBO releases, I noticed that the percentage of swear words was significantly higher than one hears in real life. I can't help wondering if this might be a reason for the show's demise. Still, two years is not a bad run for a TV show these days, and I'm sure the percentage of swear words used in Hollywood and the TV industry is in fact greater than the use of such words in the general population, so in this sense the show may be said to mirror reality.
I couldn't help thinking that there were many inside jokes being presented on the screen. The episode I watched, "White Woman's Burden" presents some openly racist dialogue thinly disguised as satire. Is it possible that the underlying themes of racism and sexual orientation were found to be too controversial even for Showtime? If so, then maybe this show has potential to make a comeback as a full length feature film.
If anything prevents this show from reaching a wide audience, it's the extremely upscale lifestyles of the cast. Everyone seems to be living in an artificial reality dominated by big money, the struggle for power, and gangsters. Yet it looks enough like the reality in the Television industry that maybe it offended some of the same people whose support it needed to continue in production. Overall, I think this show has great potential and I liked the honest attempt to present a behind the scenes look at network television. Possibly this show may illustrate some of the reasons for network television's shrinking audience. -
mozli3 December 2003It was good satire and was never designed to be a big crowd pleaser. Some good folks on it. Brian Kerwin seemed to be never more accessible as a comedic lead. If the show had gone to a bigger network they would have tried to push it into a Dick Van Dyke Show sort of blandness. Thank goodness it didn't. It kept the Russian mobsters around a lot longer than I would have imagined. Charlotte Ross and Gary Dourdan(to a much smaller degree)contributed to the shows contained anarchy. I lost track of the show after the lesbian birth doctors messed up and put the sperm of Rob Malone with his daughter's Audrey egg and Cecile's egg with Audrey's dead boyfriend sperm.
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Yarmouth10 December 2000Bad writing, bad acting and bad direction are the three prongs of anti-talent that skewer the viewer and roast him slowly over the fires of television hell while watching this piece of dreck.
Why is it that HBO is the stronghold of quality original programming, while Showtime comes up with shows that wouldn't survive half a season on UPN?