The TV Set

Tension-free satire (but the commentary is good)
This is an airless, somewhat smug, fatally mild-mannered satire about the production process behind a doomed television drama. Duchovny plays a writer/producer whose autobiographical show is, bit by bit, compromised by Weaver's executive -- the casting, the tone, the plot and even the title are all eventually distorted by a suit who takes demographic readings from her teenage daughter.

This war between artistry and commerce isn't exactly breaking news, and in fact it was already tackled years ago by the smarter, funnier "The Big Picture."

"The TV Set" is pitched too loose. Though he has plenty of opportunities, Duchovny's character never really articulates any kind of vision, and the film loses a lot of tension because the story he wants to tell really doesn't look much better than the compromised version. Even when the final version of the show appears, he seems more angry over its implied failure than he does over the loss of his vision.

Ioan...

I'M PART OF THE PROBLEM
Mike Klein (David Duchovny) has written a sit-com based on his own life. He claims to have artistic integrity and doesn't want to be "part of the problem" with the substandard shows on TV. Once it looks like his show is going to be picked up, the network wants to make changes to his story. Mike is torn between his artistic integrity and his real life pregnant wife. Sigourney Weaver gives us another good performance as an alpha female and Ioan Gruffudd does a pretty good British guy in spite of a lackluster script.

The pilot they are attempting to get picked up is pretty bad. It is not funny yet people laugh at it as if it was. The film dwells on a scene until ad nauseum. There are scenes that look like they might explode and go somewhere, by then die as if they never happened. Perhaps that was the intent, but it wasn't entertaining. 2 1/2 stars. Mildly amusing.

PARENTAL GUIDE: F-bomb, no sex, no nudity.

What can I say? Good but not great -- a rental
What to spend a couple of hours in the depths of the LA TV show development process (and its attendant dramas?). Well then TV Set might just be for you.

Engaging performances from Sigourney Weaver (whose father was a network exec so the role must have been interesting) and David Duchovny (as the put upon writer producer); genuine feeling of the real process; but at the end of the day this story is just not a big story and the characters aren't that memorable. It just does not capture the most important moment in anyone's life or provide any insights into them or our culture that are particularly profound. So it winds up being a middling sort of entertainment. Funny, but not super funny; kind of dramatic without being really moving. Insightful, but not in a super profound or memorable way. Sigourney Weaver is kind of like a slightly less amazing version of Faye Dunaway in Network.

Kasdan's Orange County was definitely better.

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