Kevin Can F Himself is a drama-comedy which is built around a very interesting idea. Every scene in the show focusing on the character of Allison is filmed like a modern, prestige, single-camera drama, with carefully constructed shots and naturalistic dialogue and shooting. Every scene featuring her husband Kevin is shot like a mid-1990s American sitcom, with bright, overlit sets, a multiple-camera setup and a full-on laughter track, with screams of laughter greeting the most tediously inane "jokes." It's like two shows from completely different genres have been mashed into one.
It's a great idea, but it's questionable if it can be sustained over an entire eight-episode season. The good news is yes, it can, although the format definitely creaks a few times over the run. It also helps that the sitcom scenes are very much in the minority of the show, accounting for much less than half of each episode and barely showing up in a couple of episodes. It also helps that the sitcom scenes are sometimes used to push forward the drama part of the story, whilst the serious scenes are sometimes also very (if often very darkly) comedic.
The show is held together by its star, Annie Murphy. Hot off of Schitt's Creek, where she played the spoiled daughter Alexis, here she plays the put-upon Allison with formidable skill. She is adept at scenes of emotional turmoil and dramatic intensity as she is at comedy, and her comedy skills are obviously outrageously good, honed by six seasons on Canada's finest. Murphy's performance is terrific and helps nail Allison's complex characterisation, where although Allison is set up to receive the audience's sympathies, she also does have a number of character flaws and is partially responsible for some of her own misfortune.
Murphy is matched by Mary Hollis Inboden as Patty, a low-key player in the first episode or two who then quickly elevates into becoming a co-lead. Patty is forthright, self-assertive and "tough" in a way that Allison isn't, but whose observations of Allison gradually turning on her inane lifestyle encourages her to also realise that hanging out with the loutish Kevin is tedious and she needs to be doing something more interesting with her life. Patty and Allison's evolution from indifferent neighbours to a near Thelma and Louise level of conspiratorial plotting and support is a brilliantly-played arc.
It's also fair to praise Eric Petersen, who has the toughest job on the show in playing Kevin. Kevin only appears in the sitcom part of the show (aside from a brief dream sequence) so Petersen has to be "on" at 110% all of the time, in that broad, brash and insufferable way that loutish husbands are in sitcoms. Kevin is meant to be loud, obnoxious and irritating, which is easy, but he also has an undercurrent of controlling obsession over his wife and friends, and Petersen nails that darker undercurrent as well.
The show has been called a teardown of sitcoms, which I think misses the point. The show isn't really saying anything about the strengths and minuses of traditional-format sitcoms at all, as instead using the format shifts to reflect the characters' psychologies. Kevin lives his life in a cotton candy cocoon of comfort and privilege, whilst Allison's life is far harder, bleaker and more complicated, and the format shift accentuates that in a very instinctively clever way.
The show does occasionally falter: the only episode that is very heavy on the sitcom format also has the misfortune to coincide with the worst of the sitcom storylines (Kevin turns a basement into an escape room), and the idea of "the sitcom is supposed to be terrible" spills over and almost drags the episode down, until the drama part of the episode saves it. And that's kind of it. The show otherwise sells itself thanks to electric performances and some very clever writing that is often brutally honest about its characters whilst making you sympathise with them.
The first season of Kevin Can F Himself (****½) is, after perhaps a slightly shaky start, funny, tremendously well-acted and quite clever. The show has been renewed for a second season, which will conclude the story, which is probably a good idea as I'm not sure the format can be sustained for 20+ episodes. The season is available to watch on AMC and AMC+ in the United States, and on Amazon Prime Video in much of the rest of the world.
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