Hilarious new 'Family Tree' has its roots in mockumentary format ...

Imagine walking into a barbecue in Christopher Guest?s backyard and discovering you?re related to every friend of his who showed up that day.

That?s pretty much what happens to Tom Chadwick, the 30-year-old Londoner in post-breakup emotional free fall at the center of HBO?s new half-hour comedy ?Family Tree,? the freshest take on the single-camera mockumentary since ?Curb Your Enthusiasm.?

When Tom (Chris O?Dowd of ?Bridesmaids?) inherits a trunk of ?bits and bobs? from his long-forgotten great-aunt Virginia, he begins to peer at photos and poke around into his great-grandfather?s life. He quizzes his father, Keith (Michael McKean), who has few answers and even less interest.

?In our clan, family is what disappears when you?re not looking at it,? Keith explains to Tom, who protests, ?That?s not a saying.?

?Well it is now, isn?t it??

As the apathetic patriarch of the family at the center of ?Family Tree,? McKean leads the pack of established Guest players attacking the documentary-style, improvised-dialogue format with renewed vigor. Bringing her established ventriloquism act to the show as Tom?s sister, Bea, is Nina Conti, carrying the same abusive monkey puppet that helped her do the weather in ?For Your Consideration.?

Living next door is the helpful Mr. Pfister, who has a lot of spare time, a laptop and a singleton daughter. Pfister is a barely recognizable Jim Piddock, the series co-creator and writer who is best known in the mockumentary universe as the guy announcing ringside with Fred Willard in ?Best in Show.?

Willard has a branch in this ?Family Tree,? too, along with frequent Guest guests Don Lake, Bob Balaban and Ed Begley Jr., who pops up in the fourth episode as a low-carbon-footprint Chadwick cousin who invites Tom to California, a moment of victory in Tom?s journey of discovery.

It?s a wonderfully droll, British, low-tech journey, with cramped shops and yellow sticky notes and awkward visits with old ladies that end with someone saying, ?This is your grandfather?s jockstrap.?

?Family Tree? also takes time out in its first installments to thoroughly mock the British, mostly via fake TV shows on the BBC2. Keith guffaws at a shockingly racist sitcom, along with his DVDs of the Monty Python-esque ?Move Along, Please.? And then there?s the Sherlock Holmes adaptation aboard a Starship Enterprise clone, something to watch while drinking unprintably named craft brew.

O?Dowd, an Irish actor who recently had a turn on HBO?s ?Girls? as an entitled New York one-percenter, steers the ship as the regular guy amid the eccentrics around him, whether he?s related to them or not. Checking the straps on a stuffed monkey?s car seat has made Tom an expert in navigating the crazy.

This show?s intense, ?Larry Sanders?-level oddballs are more in-your-face than the mellow bloodhound handlers of Guest?s feature-length projects, so the format suits them well. Tom Bennett, the lead in the ongoing Brit sitcom ?PhoneShop,? is a slapsticky contrast to the sheepish Chadwicks as Tom?s buddy Pete, a mischievous enabler in skinny jeans.

?She broke him,? Pete says of Tom?s ex, proceeding to set his friend up with ?model pretty! I swear!? blind dates to try to snap him out of his funk.

?I?m a bloke who enjoys playing PlayStation in my pants,? Pete confides to the camera. ?But five days is two days too long.?

But none of the subsequent dates, who grow hilariously more terrifying over appetizers, proves as diverting as pulling another Chadwick family artifact out of the dusty trunk. And the unemployed Tom finds himself excavating his ancestry again and again. It?s something for him to do after he finishes watching ?The Plantagenets,? a fake melodrama about a British family much more successful than the Chadwicks, but not nearly as funny.

Source: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/05/10/4229121/tv-review-hilarious-new-family.html

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