15 Storeys High, UK, 2002-2004
The new episodes of Breaking Bad won’t be out for another four months, you have watched every second of Arrested Development (no, I haven’t, but I know you have), you have given up watching Scrubs and How I Met Your Mother years ago (like any sane person would) and you need a quick fix, because you are a TV-show-junkie? Well how about a bleak comedy set in a grey and barren block of flats, centered around a misanthropic lifeguard and his childlike and weird flatmate?
This might not sound like it can be very funny, but it actually is. The humour is bizarre at times, very dry and sometimes outright surreal, refreshingly different to the standardized sitcom-dullness we get on TV every day. Quite often the series reminded me of Jaques Tati’s Playtime or the films of Aki Kaurismäki and Roy Andersson. A lot of the series’ brilliance is due to the excellent scripts and the performances of Sean Lock as the cynical lifeguard Vince and Benedict Wong as the clumsy and hopelessly optimistic Errol. They seem like a very unlikely pairing but the chemistry and the inherent conflict between the two of them is really powerful.
The episodes are very slowly paced and the plots are quite bizarre yet somehow surprisingly close to life at the same time. They are full of odd but yet strangely familiar characters, most of whom you probably wouldn’t want to be stuck in an elevator with. In every episode there are also little surreal sub-plots telling the stories of people living in other the flats of the building, like a short-tempered father who tries to put together a relaxation tape but is constantly disturbed by his family, a preacher who sells underwear because nobody wants to listen to him otherwise, or a woman who makes up nightmares so that she can call her daughter in the middle of the night.
No matter how strange all of this might sound, the show never looses touch of the rather grim reality its characters are faced with. This contrast makes the humour stand out even more and ensures that the series never feels aloof.
There were only 12 episodes ever made, each of them only 30 minutes long. I found them to be very addictive, so much so, that I watched the whole series in only two days. It really makes a nice change from all the other things we watch every day and it’s very, very obscure, making it the ideal series for anyone who deems him or herself hip, in or different. Here is an example of how you might want to weave it into a conversation: “I guess you haven’t heard of 15 Storeys High? It’s this like post-modern sitcom about an Orwellian plattenbau? And omg, it’s so like about what Adorno and Nietzsche were like talking about? But like on TV, which is totally ironic?”. Well, at least I am going to say that from now on.
barbarisk 