Sony's C-Spot: New Web comedy lineup surprisingly clean despite Ron Jeremy cameo

Sony Pictures Television officially launched C-Spot today, a new web TV channel that will be home to a 13-week season of online comedy.  There will be six new scripted shows, one "airing" each day of the week.  Going along with the conventional wisdom about online audience-building, C-Spot will play on a variety of platforms, including Sony's Crackle, YouTube and Hulu, with revenue-sharing deals so Sony can get a piece of the advertising pie no matter where the shows get watched.

The shows represent, if not a giant leap forward for online television, at least a step in the right direction.  They avoid the id-riddled blue humor that many Web comedy portals can't seem to get away from.  In fact, there are so few curse words and blatant sexual references that even this blog can get away with embedding episodes.  Check one out below.

There's a definite gamut here of funny to absurd.  But all the shows are well-produced -- with budgets of about $10k/episode, according to Sony -- and they're all at least somewhat amusing, with the best managing to be downright chuckleworthy.

The Writers Room is one of the more dynamic and character-driven programs.  It's a Larry Sanders-esque look at a group of writers putting together a late-night talk show, in this case "Super Late with Kevin Pollock."  Except for a once-an-episode conference call cameo, Pollock never actually appears on the show.  One of the in-jokes is that the cast is made up of real TV writers, including Bruce Kirschbaum ("Seinfeld," "Everybody Loves Raymond"), Jeff Kahn ("The Ben Stiller Show") and Frank Conniff (MST3000).  More than that, the show's 10 short episodes were shot in five days, so in a way it's not inaccurate to say it's really just a camera pointed at a room full of writers riffing all day.  Which turns out to be worth watching.

Gaytown, the brainchild of MySpace comedian Owen Benjamin, chronicles the travails of a straight man trapped in a gay world--a surprisingly fertile premise that Benjamin uses to point up all the little injustices gays face in the real world, except in reverse.  In one episode, Owen and two other closeted straight dudes are busted in a public restroom in the middle of their fantasy sports draft.  Benjamin wrote, produced, starred in and scored the show -- a model of the kind of uber-control creators of Web series can enjoy.

From Crackle: Gaytown: Episode 2

The Roadents is an animated series about the misadventures of two guniea pigs traveling the country in a motor home.  Created by the animation studio BixPix Entertainment, the show is essentially the improv stylings of two comics -- Pee Pee is voiced by Kevin McShane and Buttercup  by David Harris, with the voices set to cool animation by Justin Hilden.

C-Spot also features The Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show (which parodies strange Japanese talk shows and even has a guest appearance by Ron Jeremy), the Best of Penn Says (a vlog diary by Penn Jillette) and Hot, Hot Los Angeles, a
kind of comedic soap opera, half "The Hills," half "Entourage" and a little half-baked.

Sure, a few of the shows will probably get canceled after their first season, but others deserve to be renewed.  And along the way, C-Spot may well add some mainstream legitimacy (I never thought I'd write those words!) to online TV.

Comments

[ozzie]

"Gaytown" is terrific: funny, even witty, subtle and nuanced. One of the straight women, for example, knew she wasn't gay because she didn't like softball. How funny can you get? And all the stereotypes of gay life are turned inside out for comedic effect as well as for intelligent social commentary.Great stuff.