Get Set

On a friend's recommendation, I recently checked ou the movie The TV Set. I have no idea how he found out about the movie; it played at a couple of film festivals a few years ago, received no wide theatrical release, and was unceremoniously dumped on home video a short while later.

But it is a bit of a mystery to me how that could have happened. It has an easily explainable and interesting plot: it's the story of a television writer sturggling to get his series pilot made without compromising his vision. It had the backing of some big names, including as a producer Judd Apatow (whom you could easily imagine lived many of the events in this film).

It also had a few fairly big names in the cast. David Duchovny stars as the writer. Sigourney Weaver is a powerhouse TV executive putting him through hell. And you'll also see Ioan Gruffudd as a BBC Television transplant trying to switch to American television, Judy Greer as the writer's agent, Justine Bateman as the writer's pregnant wife, and Dollhouse's Fran Kranz as an actor cast for the television series.

When you get down to it, it's a pretty good movie. The performances in particular really make it work. David Duchovny deadpans in the manner of the best comedic episodes of The X-Files. Sigourney Weaver is just perfect as a ball-busting exec with her life's priorities completely out of whack, beholden only to what will sell. And Fran Kranz is perhaps the best of all; he shifts effortlessly between good acting and intentionally bad acting in some of the best and funniest scenes in the movie.

Perhaps the movie was considered a little too "insider" for a wide release. There is a lot of "Hollywood" material in it. But ultimately, it's just a look at what happens when "creatives" clash with "executives," and can really apply to a lot of other jobs outside of television. Okay, it's not a fantastic movie, because you can probably imagine most of what there is to say on that subject yourself, but this is a funny movie that deserved better. I rate it a B-.